


Put On Your War Paint

by slythatheart



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Background Cisco Ramon/Lisa Snart, Canon-Typical Violence, Child Abuse, Graphic Description of a murder scene, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Incestual Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Past Child Abuse, Referenced Past Canonical Character Death, Temporary Character Death, brief Leonard Snart/Original Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-05
Updated: 2015-11-09
Packaged: 2018-04-24 21:17:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 15
Words: 42,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4935667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slythatheart/pseuds/slythatheart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Barry has learned his lesson after being betrayed at Ferris Air; the Snarts can't be trusted. So when Captain Cold approaches him for his help, Barry does the only thing he can — he says no.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is canon divergent after the end of season one. Everything up to and including the final episode occurred as it did in canon, but once season two begins airing it will be completely jossed.
> 
> The rating may change later. I hope to post a new chapter each week, maybe more if I can build up more of a buffer of what I've got written.
> 
> This fic is going to be full of some really awful things, but rest assured that I have every intention of it ending happily.
> 
> The title comes from a line from The Phoenix by Fall Out Boy.

“Hey, so, uh...we may have a problem?” Cisco’s voice sounded strangely uncertain, but the fact that he called when he knew Barry was at work had to mean something.

“What’s wrong?”

“Well, there’s kind of...ice. In the lab. Or, actually, all over one of the glass walls.”

“Snart.”

“Yeeaaaahhh,” Cisco answered slowly. “Either that, or we have a freakishly localized coolant leak that we haven’t noticed, although considering the ice has a message in it, that seems unlikely. But you don’t need to—”

Barry hung up and was on his way to S.T.A.R. Labs before Cisco could finish his sentence.

When he arrived, he couldn’t help but stare. He ignored Cisco, who was leaning over his monitor looking confused, and instead focused on the issue at hand. Not only was there a sheet of ice spread across the glass, but there were icicles, some as long as Barry’s forearm, clinging to the wall. The message that Cisco had mentioned was jutting out in thicker sections of ice.

_1072 Kingston St_  
_Noon_

“Did he take anything? Damage anything?” Barry asked, and Cisco shook his head, waving Barry over to check out what he was looking at.

“Before you hung up on me — rude, by the way — I was going to tell you not to bother rushing over. Captain Cold didn’t touch anything except the glass. _Nada_. I even pulled up the surveillance footage of the lab to double check, and he just walked in, did _that_ —” he gestured widely with his arm, “—and left.”

On screen, Snart was doing exactly as Cisco had said. He didn’t take anything, in fact he barely even glanced around except to decide where to leave his message. It wasn’t until the icy note was complete that he even showed a hint of the arrogance Barry was used to seeing from Cold; he looked directly at the surveillance camera and smirked, then left.

“I tracked his path in and out, too,” Cisco added. “He didn’t stop anywhere else, just came straight here, and went straight out. He could have stolen or damaged a whole bunch of crazy expensive stuff, but he didn’t. What’s up with that?”

“Snart doesn’t do anything he doesn’t plan,” Barry said. “He’s not really into random destruction. He wanted to leave me a message, and he did.”

Cisco huffed a little, but instead of commenting, he just eyed the iced-over glass reproachfully.

“At least he didn’t bring Mick Rory,” Barry offered. “He probably would have set half the place on fire.”

“Why would you even suggest...?” Cisco picked up his keyboard, wrapping his arms around it protectively.

“I’m just _saying._ ”

* * *

“You’re not actually going to _go_ , are you?” was the first thing Caitlin said when she saw the message.

“Do I even have a choice?”

“You could try, oh, say... _not going_!” Her voice went surprisingly shrill by the time she’d finished her sentence, and Barry winced.

“He wants me there for a reason, right?” Barry said, trying to sound convincing as he looked over the message on the wall one more time. “Sure, _this_ time he didn’t cause any real trouble, but he’s pretty much proven he can walk in here whenever he likes without even triggering our security. Snart isn’t the kind of person I can ignore until he goes away — that only makes him more determined.”

“So we’ll improve our security!”

“For the record,” Cisco said, raising his hand like he was interrupting class instead of speaking up to his friend, “I agree with Caitlin.”

Caitlin shot Barry a triumphant look which he ignored.

“Even if we _could_ make this place completely impregnable, what’s to stop Snart from just going out and causing trouble until he gets my attention? At least this time he just...left a note.” He paused, then added, “Sort of.”

When neither Caitlin nor Cisco had a response for him, Barry sighed, rubbing the back of his neck uncertainly. “Look, I know, okay? I’m not an idiot, even if this isn’t a trap, it’s not going to be anything good. But I can’t risk him doing anything terrible to get me to agree. Both of you have been kidnapped because he wanted my attention, don’t you think I should try to avoid something like that if I can?”

“I still think this is a really, _really_ bad idea,” Caitlin told him. Cisco was nodding emphatically in agreement.

“Yeah,” Barry muttered under his breath. “So do I.”

He didn’t think it was a trap, not really. If it was, he was almost certain Snart would have lured him in some other way, would have engineered a scenario that The Flash was guaranteed to respond to. This was too...too uncalculated. There was no precise guarantee that Barry would respond to something like this, and Snart was all about precision.

But what would Leonard Snart want with Barry, if not to cause trouble for him?


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't going to post this so soon, but I really enjoyed the S2 premiere, and oops, I couldn't help myself. Let's hope I don't get too excited and post through my buffer of written chapters too quickly.

At 11:55 a.m. Barry sped towards the address Snart had left him. It was an empty, unassuming building in an area of town that had no particular reputation for anything. It was easily ignored, in the same way that the neighborhood surrounding it was easily ignored, and that made perfect sense. After all, Snart was intelligent enough to avoid being conspicuous.

He took a few moments to check the place out, but there was nothing Barry could find that screamed 'trap' to him. Of course, he wasn't as underhanded as Snart, and he wasn't as good at thinking like the bad guys as Oliver was, but he was pretty sure he was safe.

Well, as safe he could be around someone like Snart, which wasn't as reassuring as he'd like. He'd learned his lesson since that night at Ferris Air, and he wasn't about to go trusting Captain Cold or his accomplices again any time soon.

The building only had a few rooms, and only one entrance. The biggest room, which was most likely used as a warehouse at some point, was one large space with bare cement floors that took up most of the building. There was also a tiny bathroom, and a small carpeted room that probably served as an office. Barry had searched each thoroughly and found nothing concerning, so he stood in the center of the large, empty room to wait.

At noon — to the very second, Barry would be willing to bet — Snart stepped through the door.

"You came _early_ ," Snart said with a strange smile. It wasn't his usual condescending grin, and Barry didn't know what to make of it. He stopped several yards away, which was probably a smart precaution since the last time they had seen each other was when Snart double crossed him. "How cute."

Barry folded his arms and glared. "I wanted to check the place out first."

"Oh, yes, I saw. You arrived one minute and four seconds early, spent nine seconds breezing around doing what I can only assume was an incredibly _thorough_ investigation to ensure your own safety, then stood waiting for me. I presume you're satisfied that I don't have Lisa and her gold gun hiding in the rafters, then?"

"What do you _want_ , Snart?"

"Quid pro quo, kid." He paused, throwing Barry a smirk, but it looked...off. Barry had seen him smirk often, but this time it seemed forced. "I helped you, now it's your turn to help me."

Barry almost choked on a startled laugh. He waited for the punchline, and when none came he dropped his arms to his sides and took a few angry steps forward.  

"You _helped_ me?! Is that a joke? Because of you, three A.R.G.U.S. agents and one metahuman are dead, three metas are on the loose in the city, and Caitlin almost died last week before I finally managed to recapture Nimbus — who, if you didn't know, is a murderer who can turn himself _into toxic gas_."

"And I'm sure Central City is eternally grateful for your service. Kudos. Back to the topic at hand—"

"Right," Barry cut him off; irrationally stung by the fact that Snart could so casually brush off betraying him in that way. "Back to you asking for my help after you broke my trust. This should be good."

Snart sighed dramatically. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that you'd hold that against me, but I _had_ thought you'd show a little more gratitude for the man who saved your life."

"You didn't save my life," Barry scoffed.

"I didn't kill you when I could have. And I didn't let anyone else kill you, either."

"That's not even remotely the same thing!"

Snart shrugged. "Semantics. It counts. You owe me, Flash, and I'm ready to collect."

"I don't owe you a thing, Snart!" Barry was getting angry, maybe even too angry for the situation. Something about Snart always got under his skin more than it should; he had to clench his fists and focus on calming down.

"Alright," Snart told him, raising his arms to chest level, palms out like he was attempting to calm a wild animal. "Then consider me one of your endangered charges."

He wasn't holding his gun, Barry was startled to realize. It was there, holstered under his parka, but they both knew that there was no way in hell Snart would be able to get it out faster than Barry could reach him. Of course, Barry was never the type to attack unprovoked and Snart undoubtedly knew that, but it seemed strange, nonetheless.

"Why aren't you carrying your gun?" Barry asked him suspiciously.

"Tennis elbow," he quipped with a fake, toothy grin. Barry wasn't impressed, and that must have been clear because after a few seconds Snart added, "Why? Are you planning on attacking me? Going rogue yourself, perhaps?"

"It just seems a little unusual. And if I've learned anything in the last six months it's to question the unusual."

It wasn't much of anything, just a little quirk of Snart's lips that would have been easy to miss, but Barry caught it, and something about it made him uncomfortable. The tiny flicker of amusement disappeared fast, too fast, and Barry suddenly realized why the situation felt so strange.

Snart was always condescendingly amused. Always.

But not today. Snart was trying to cover it up, but something was honestly wrong; something had bothered him enough that he had to feign his usual attitude.

"We both know the Scarlet Speedster is too honorable — and too scared of his identity being made public — to attack me when I'm not doing anything wrong."

"Then why bring the gun at all?"

"It's a dangerous world out there, Flash. Not everyone is as honorable as you are."

Snart was scared. Barry wasn't sure when he'd gotten to know Snart so well — wasn't sure how he could tell even though Snart was speaking so coolly, so casually — but he knew it was true. Whatever Snart wanted from him, it wasn't a trap. Or, more likely, not _just_ a trap. Barry was no longer naive enough to think Snart would pass up an opportunity to take advantage, even if he did want Barry's help.

"Just tell me what you want, Snart. I have other places to be."

"Yes, you're a terribly busy man, though I think if anyone can find a little time in a hectic schedule, it's someone who moves as quickly as you do."

Barry rolled his eyes, fully prepared to leave. He took two deliberately measured steps towards the door before Snart sighed.

"Fine. I assume you've read my file — my _former_ file, I should say." This time the smirk was real, though extremely short lived. "But in case you haven't, I'll start by telling you that my father was...not a good man. He didn't treat me or my sister particularly well."

That was an understatement. Barry hadn't been able to read the details without feeling sympathy for the siblings, despite all their faults. He'd only made it a little way through a very long report on the various charges laid against Snart senior — all for crimes against his two children — before he felt too disgusted to continue. Maybe the worst part was the investigating officer's claim that the man seemed to actually enjoy hurting his kids; like it was a game to see how much he could get away with before someone noticed.

"Dear old Dad is being released today," Snart continued. "Out early on 'good behavior'. Apparently when you're serving multiple _consecutive_ sentences, forty-seven years is an ample threat, but twenty years is a cheaper — and therefore somehow more appealing — length of time to hold violent child abusers," he scoffed.

Snart looked away from Barry, staring at the far wall for several moments before he spoke again. "He was _supposed_ to be in there until he was too old to function." He took a long, deep breath and shook his head. "Or better yet, until he was in the ground, but now they're letting him out, because of overcrowding, or lack of funding, or some other bureaucratic nonsense." Snart clenched his fists, and then unclenched them slowly, like he had to force himself to keep his usual level of calm. "He's not going to forget why he was in prison. I want you to stop him before he gets to me or my sister."

Barry gritted his teeth and smothered the part of him that wanted to help. He couldn't trust Snart; he was a criminal who'd find a way to turn any situation in his favor, leaving Barry — and probably Barry's friends — in trouble.

"Are you trying to tell me you can't handle him yourself?" Barry said, ignoring how uncomfortable he felt with his own cold tone. "You and your sister are adults now. You're both armed, and you're definitely both dangerous. Besides, what makes you even think he'll come after you?"

"Because I _know_ him," Snart hissed. Something ugly twisted into his expression, but it was gone before Barry could identify it. His face returned to the smooth, cool countenance that it usually held, but Barry could see the fear he was trying to hide. His eyes, normally a clear, brilliant blue, were stormy with it. "You're right, of course. Lisa and I can take care of ourselves. But I thought I'd give you the opportunity to play hero. After all, when my father comes after me I'll be shooting to kill, and we agreed I wouldn't do that anymore." He narrowed his eyes, like he was challenging Barry somehow. "One last chance, Flash. Are you going to help me, or am I going to kill him?"

Barry took a few deep breaths and hoped desperately that he was doing the right thing. "I can't help you."

Snart's expression didn't change, but he stared at Barry for a long time before he answered.

"Call a spade, a spade, _Barry_. Of course you can help us. You just _won't_." His words were cutting and his voice was steady, but Barry didn't think he imagined the way Snart's bottom lip was trembling minutely.

"I can't save everyone," Barry told him, stamping down the guilt churning in his gut at the words.

"But you at least _try_ ," Snart insisted, voice sharp but eyes wide with disbelief. "That's what you _do_. You help people, no matter what!"

"That's what I used to do, and look what happened." Barry paused. He didn't have to justify himself, he knew that, but he couldn't quite help the urge. "I'm sorry Snart, I really am, but I can't help you when I know you'll turn on me the second you have the chance."

"Some hero you are." Snart sounded angry and accusing, but there was something about the way he spoke, a sad undercurrent that knocked the air out of Barry like a punch to the gut.

After a few moments Barry started for the door. When he reached it, he turned back to look Snart in the eye. "Who you're really mad at is yourself. This is on you," he said, echoing Snart's words from that night at Ferris Air, in a tone more sad than mocking. "You know...I would have helped you in a heartbeat, before. But then you showed me that some people are too untrustworthy to stand beside."


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My background Cisco/Lisa is a lot more foreground than I originally intended. Sorry, not sorry!

“Got anything else for me, guys?” Barry asked as he left yet another criminal in the capable hands of the CCPD.

“Barry, you haven’t taken a break all afternoon, what’s going on?” He could hear Caitlin’s concern through the comms unit, but he didn’t want to talk about it. “Is it something to do with Cold? What happened when you saw him?”

“I’m just trying to make Central City a safer place,” Barry answered, ignoring her questions about Snart. He hadn’t told her or Cisco anything, except that there was nothing to worry about. He wasn’t sure whether they’d agree with his decision or be disappointed in him for rejecting a plea for help. He’d hate it either way, he just wasn’t sure which possibility he’d hate more.

“She’s right, man,” Cisco said. “You’ve been running around even more than usual. Which is kind of awesome because of all the bad guys you’ve stopped, but it’s also kind of…you know. Weird.”

Barry sighed. They were right. He hadn’t stopped trying to prevent crime and help the city for even a few minutes since he’d spoken to Snart earlier that day. He was using his role as The Flash to distract himself, but he wasn’t prepared to admit to his friends that he was trying to fight off his own guilt.

He didn’t even fully understand why he felt so terrible about saying no. Sure, it seemed wrong to ignore someone who needed help, but the morality of the situation couldn’t be enough to make that split second of...of _something_ on Snart’s face replay in Barry’s mind every moment he wasn’t focused on saving someone else, could it?

 _You can’t trust him,_ Barry reminded himself sternly. _If you help him, he’ll just use the opportunity to betray you again._

“Fine, guys. I’ll take a break now, okay?”

“Sounds good, Ba—”

“ _Flash_ ,” Caitlin cut in suddenly. “You should get back here. _Now_. We have a visitor.”

“Is it Snart?” he asked, already speeding towards S.T.A.R. Labs. He was less than a minute away, but that was plenty of time for something terrible to happen if Snart were angry enough. Barry should have known there could be retaliation, he should have _warned_ them, no matter how—

“Not...exactly?” she answered. “Keep your mask on.”

He breezed through the long halls towards the lab, stopping short in the doorway when he saw who was perched on the edge of a desk, eying her own fingernails critically.

“What are you doing here, Ms. Snart?”

“Call me Lisa.”

Barry glared at her, but she was apparently just as stubborn has he was, meeting his glare with an unperturbed expression. The silence hung between them for a few moments, before Barry rolled his eyes. There were some battles not really worth fighting, he knew.

“Fine. What are you doing here, _Lisa_?”

She smiled sweetly at him, but there was something venomous in her eyes. “Don’t I get to call you by _your_ first name?”

“Don’t push your luck.” He stepped into the lab, closer to where Cisco and Caitlin were standing behind the computer station. Lisa’s gun was by her side; in reach, but not in her hand. It was just like Snart’s had been earlier; present, yet not a direct threat. “Answer the question.”

She didn’t look surprised by his refusal, she just shrugged more innocently than a career criminal should be able to manage. “Cisco invited me.”

“I did _not!_ ” Cisco protested. “You’re such a liar!” He suddenly frowned. “Why am I still surprised about that?”

“I’m only a liar when I need to be, Cisco baby. And I’m not lying about this. Don’t you remember telling me that I should come check out your lab sometime? To _see where_ _the magic happens_?”

“Cisco!” Caitlin smacked Cisco on the shoulder.

Cisco winced as he rubbed his shoulder, looking both guilty and embarrassed. “That was _before_ I knew she was evil!”

“Well, you never specified a time frame,” Lisa told him, standing smoothly and moving — no, _stalking_ — towards Cisco. Barry debated for a moment whether to interfere, but he figured he should let Cisco deal with her. Besides, she’d left her gun on the desk behind her and the computers were a barrier of sorts, so Cisco was safe. “You never uninvited me, either,” she purred.

She leaned forward, palms on the table in front of Cisco, who was looking up at her with his mouth wide open but his eyes determinedly not leaving her face. After several awkward moments there was a shuffle under the desk and Cisco yelped, glancing quickly at Caitlin then back at Lisa. “I didn’t? Well...I’m…you’re uninvited. You’re totally uninvited.”

“Aw, well that’s a shame,” Lisa said with a pout before straightening back up and turning to face Barry. “But I still need to talk to this masked menace over here.”

Behind Lisa’s back, Cisco was pouting at Caitlin. _This sucks_ , he mouthed and she rolled her eyes at him.

“I’ve got nothing to say to you,” Barry countered. If he ignored her, she might get frustrated and leave, he figured. He moved over to the computer station, hoping for some kind of distraction, but she grabbed his arm angrily.

“Well, I’ve got _plenty_ to say to _you_.”

“You’re not going to change my mind.”

“Ooookay,” Cisco interrupted. “What’s going on?”

“You didn’t tell them?”

Barry folded his arms over his chest. “No, because it’s ridiculous.”

“Ridicu—?” Lisa cut herself off. “Do you have _any idea_ how hard it was for Lenny to go to you in the first place? He makes deals with people when it suits him, but he never just _asks_ for help. He’s too proud for that.”

Barry didn’t know what to say to that, so he said nothing. After a few moments, Lisa made a small, frustrated noise. “He’s smart, you know? Too smart, because he resents that there’s something his plans and strategies can’t deal with. He knew he had nothing to bargain with, but he went to you anyway, because we _need_ your help.”

Guilt was stirring in Barry’s mind, but he pushed it aside to remind himself of all the reasons he couldn’t trust anything he heard from Snart or his sister.

“Oh come _on,_ ” he scoffed. “Do you seriously expect me to believe that you and your brother can’t deal with a man in his sixties?”

“You really think it’s that simple?” she asked condescendingly. “I know Lenny’s pretending he just doesn’t want to break your stupid no-killing rule, but are you really _buying_ that? We need you. He’ll hate me for telling you this, but he’s _terrified_.” She paused. “And so am I.”

Barry looked away from the desperation on Lisa’s face. She had the same sharp, ice blue eyes as her brother and the sincerity in them was painful to see. He had to fight not to squirm uncomfortably; he couldn’t afford to let her see she was getting to him. Instead, he focused on Cisco and Caitlin, on the confused looks on their faces, and what could happen to them if he trusted Snart again.

“I’m not going to let myself and my friends get dragged into one of Snart’s plots just because you’re both playing the sympathy card.”

“Lenny,” she said, voice rough.

“What?”

“His name is _Lenny_ ,” Lisa insisted.

“I’m _not_ calling him—”

“Then call him Len, whatever,” she snarled. “But _stop_ calling him Snart with that...that _tone_ like he’s not even human. He’s more than a criminal, Flash. He’s my brother. He’s a living, breathing person who needs your help enough to ask despite our crappy history with you. Doesn’t that tell you something?”

“I’m sorry,” Barry told her, and he meant it more than he was willing to let on. “But I can’t trust you, or your brother. So...so I can’t help you. But you and...and _Len_ always have a plan. You can handle anything, including your father.”

Lisa’s jaw was clenched, and Barry came to the sudden and unsettling realization that she was fighting tears. He could hear Cisco and Caitlin whispering furiously at each other; he couldn’t make out what they were saying, but he could guess.

“Things aren’t always black and white, Flash. I don’t know what kind of a golden life you’ve led, but people like me and my brother? We’ve been through hell. So yeah we can handle almost anything, but there’s one thing — one _person —_ that scares us. And we need your help to stop him.”

“I want to believe you,” Barry said honestly, swallowing past the lump that had formed in his throat. “And I wish I could help you. But people died last time I trusted you, and I can’t let that happen again.”

“Fine,” Lisa told him shakily. “ _Fine_. But whatever happens to us now...I hope you know it’s your fault.”

She stormed from the lab, pausing in the doorway to throw over her shoulder, “You should study up a little on childhood trauma, Flash. Maybe then you’d understand why we don’t want to face him.”

She was only out of sight for a few moments before Cisco was following after her, the gold gun in his hands. Barry hadn’t even realized Lisa had left it behind, and he doubted she had been aware of it, either.

“Cisco, what are you _doing_?” Caitlin asked.

Cisco turned to face them both, looking determined. “I know why we’re not helping her, okay? It makes sense.” He furrowed his brow and glared at the gun. “And I’m fully aware that this gun makes her dangerous, but I’m not letting her leave here without it. Not...not when it sounds like she really needs it.”

Barry sighed. “Cisco…”

“No! I’m sorry Barry, but this isn’t up to you. I made this gun. _I_ did. So this is _my_ decision to make. I get that we can’t trust them, and why we’re not teaming up with them, but I’m not going to play keep-away with the one thing she has that might help her. Them. I don’t...I don’t know why I even care, but I do.”

He left, jogging down the hall before Barry knew what to say. Caitlin stared after him, biting her lip uncertainly before shifting her gaze to Barry.

“You meant it,” she said eventually. “When you said you wanted to help them...you meant it.”

“Yeah. I want to. I really, really do. But…”

“But you can’t be sure about what they’ll try. Even if they’re serious about needing your help.”

“Exactly.” Barry collapsed into a chair, dropping his face into his hands for several moments before he looked back up at her. “What she said...about trauma. Do you think she was telling the truth? About...do you think they’re really too scared to be able to fight him if they need to? Sn—Len seemed so sure their dad would come after them, would hurt them. But they can handle it, can’t they?”

Caitlin hesitated. “It’s impossible to say. It’s true that trauma can do a lot to a person, of course. But Cold? I really can’t imagine that there’s _anyone_ he’s too scared to go toe-to-toe with. I mean, he’s never been scared to face you even with everything you can do. He wasn’t even that worried about dealing with a bunch of metahumans.” She stopped, frowning thoughtfully. “Their dad _is_ just the regular kind of scum, right? Not that I want to paint abusive parents as the norm, but on a scale where there are also people who can control the weather or turn themselves into toxic gas…” she shook her head. “Besides, it’s not just them, they have Mick Rory, too. Even if they _are_ telling the truth that they can’t fight their father themselves, Rory would jump at the chance to set someone on fire.”

Barry nodded. After a moment, Caitlin moved closer and squeezed his shoulder. She smiled encouragingly. “For what it’s worth, I think you made the right decision, even if it doesn’t feel like it.”

“I hope so.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd like to take this opportunity to reiterate and stress two of the tags: _Temporary Character Death_ and _Happy Ending_.
> 
> So please don't panic. Also, I'm sorry.
> 
>  
> 
> _/* Flashbacks and/or memories */_

Barry took a sip of his still-scalding coffee and grimaced.

“I’m sorry,” Iris said softly. “I know I’m being mopey, I need to stop dragging everyone else down with me.”

“No! No, Iris, you have every right to be upset. You’re _not_ alone, okay? And you’re not dragging anyone anywhere. We all miss him. I wasn’t...I just…” he gestured hopelessly at his coffee. “I burned my mouth.”

“Oh,” she blushed, “right.” She offered him a tiny smile. “I just miss Eddie so much, and I guess sometimes I think it must be too much for everyone else to have to be around me while I feel like this.”

“Well it’s not. I’m here for you. We’re all here for you. And if you ever need to talk to me about how you’re feeling, or about him, you can.” His phone beeped an incoming message at him, and when he opened it up he shot Iris an apologetic look. “I’m so sorry, it’s work. There’s a crime scene I need to get to. But I meant what I said, okay?”

“Yeah, I know. Thanks Barr. Now, you go,” Iris shooed him, reaching across the table to drag his mug over to her. “I’ll be okay. And I’m more than willing to take advantage of your abandoned coffee. Saves me ordering another one while I try to muster up an idea for my next story.”

* * *

When Barry arrived at the scene Joe was waiting for him on the sidewalk.

“Hey Joe! What’ve we got?” Barry asked. When he tried to step past Joe towards the entrance of the building, Joe blocked his path.

“Homicide. But Barry, before you go in I should warn you, it’s pretty messed up in there. Brutal.”

“Uh, okay,” Barry replied, slightly confused. “That’s awful, but it uh...it happens.” He wasn’t a rookie anymore; he’d seen his share of terrible crime scenes, and he always dealt with it. Joe hadn’t tried to shield him from that in a long time.

“Right,” Joe agreed, but he didn’t move out of Barry’s way. “But this time...Barry, it was Snart.”

_/* “One last chance, Flash. Are you going to help me, or am I going to kill him?” */_

So Len had made good on his threat after all. Barry felt a stirring of guilt, but he shoved it aside. If Snart senior had tried to hurt his kids again, Barry wasn’t going to let himself feel pity for the guy.

Joe was staring at him with an expression that was too sad and too concerned for the circumstances. Unless...unless the victim was an innocent person.

Barry’s stomach churned. He’d told Joe about Len’s request a few days earlier, and about the fact that Barry had said no. They’d even discussed what would happen if Len decided to retaliate, but neither of them had really expected him to react by viciously murdering people.

“He’s killing again? Why…?” he faltered. Whatever happened in there, it was Barry’s fault, at least partly. “Did the victim get in his way while he was working a job? Or is he killing just to punish me now?”

“No, Barry, _no_. It wasn’t...Snart wasn’t the killer, Barr. He was the victim.”

“What? No. No, that’s not possible.”

“Barry…”

“Joe, it can’t be him. He’s too...he’s too smart for that,” Barry argued. His stomach was roiling and he could feel his chest tightening in panic, but he fought it down because there was _no way_ that the body in there could be Len. “Lisa wouldn’t have let anything happen to her brother. And Mick Rory, what about him? Where was he?”

“There are signs of scorching. We think maybe Rory got here just in time to scare off the perp.”

“Just in time?! How can he have been _in time_ , if—”

“Because _Lisa_ Snart is still alive. She was brought into Central City Hospital by an agitated man matching Mick Rory’s description. He disappeared straight after, but she’s been in critical condition since about three this morning, with a laundry list of physical trauma including a severe head injury and a gunshot wound. There are officers guarding her room, but so far she hasn’t woken up.”

Barry shook his head, a last ditch effort to deny what he was being told, but he knew Joe wouldn’t lie to him. His eyes were burning, but when he swiped a shaky hand across them he was relieved to find it came away dry.

“How...how can a man do something like that to his own kids?”

Joe’s hand was on Barry’s shoulder, moving him slowly towards some nearby steps where they both sat, Barry with his head hanging and his elbows resting on his knees as he tried not to think about the look in Len’s eyes when he was asking for help.

“Listen, Snart had enemies. We don’t know for sure that Lewis Snart was the one—”

“Oh come _on_ , Joe!” Barry snapped, shrugging Joe’s hand off him. “Stop trying to pretend this could be something else. This is...it’s my fault.”

“It’s not—”

“It _is!_ They asked me for my help, and I said no.” His voice cracked, and Barry had to force the rest of the words out. “They...they really needed me and I turned my back because I didn’t trust them. I didn’t take them seriously. I thought they could handle it, that I’d be risking too much by helping them.”

“You made the right decision based on the circumstances, Barr. You can’t beat yourself up over this.”

“If I made the right decision, I wouldn’t have spent the last six days second guessing myself. I could tell...I _knew_ Len was worried when he approached me, but I brushed him off. Lisa practically _begged_ me. Their blood is on my hands, Joe.”

Barry’s hands were trembling. He couldn’t stop staring at them, like any moment they’d be dripping with red and he’d be able to prove what he was saying. Whatever horrifying scene awaited him inside, he was as much at fault as if he’d committed the crime himself.

“Look, I will tell you over and over until I’m blue in the face if you need me to,” Joe said seriously. “This wasn’t your fault. But if you...if you’re not going to be okay in there, I’ll tell the Captain that you aren’t feeling well. We can get someone else from forensics in to deal with this.”

It was tempting. Beyond tempting. There was nothing Barry wanted more than to bury his head in the sand and pretend nothing had happened, but he knew he couldn’t.

Len and Lisa might not have been his friends, but they deserved better than that. And he trusted his coworkers, but he couldn’t risk that they could miss something important because they didn’t have the same knowledge of the situation that Barry had.

“No,” he answered, taking a long, deep breath and pulling himself together as best as he could manage, “absolutely not. I have to do this. This is my responsibility.”

* * *

Barry stepped a few feet through the entrance hall and into the living room. Within a fraction of a second he wished he could step right back out again. He'd seen worse during his time with the CCPD, but knowing what he knew; the victims, the motive, and the fact that he could have prevented everything...the room he was in and the horror it contained hit him so much harder than any other crime scene had.

His eyes were drawn immediately to the white sheet on the far side of the room, the one that covered Le—the body. Barry couldn't let himself think of it as Len, he _couldn't._ Not until he had to.

Normally, that would be where he'd start his investigation; begin with the body and work backwards, but he wasn't ready. He needed – he needed more time. Instead, he started a few steps away from the front door, at the bottom of a staircase that led to the second floor.

“Anything up there?” he asked Joe, who shook his head.

“Nothing out of the ordinary. Some bedrooms, a bathroom. It doesn't look like the perp made it that far, there's just some clothing, phone chargers, bathroom supplies. The usual. You wanna take a look?”

“Later. Unless there’s a chance he could have come in from up there?” Barry asked, mentally cataloguing everything he could see from where he was standing. He had a good view of most of the room, as well as the entrance to what he could guess was a kitchen and dining area. “That security system by the front door should have set off a loud alarm if anyone opened the door without swiping a keycard to deactivate it. There’s no way the Sn— the victims would have left it unarmed, and it doesn’t look tampered with. And while we’re on the subject, how did the perp even know how to find them?”

“You think Rory tipped him off? Maybe gave him a keycard?”

“No,” Barry shook his head. “No way. He’s their friend. And if not that, we can at least be sure he’d go where the money is. The victims were worth more to Rory alive as partners in crime than the perp could ever hope to be able to pay him.”

“You’re right,” Joe agreed. “And knowing them, they’d have more than one place they could have picked to hole up, so they must have thought this was their safest bet. Okay, we can look into how he knew where to find them later. Let’s focus on how he got in. The upstairs windows are all barred, and there are no other entrances up there. There’s a door in the kitchen that leads out to the backyard, but it's been blocked off.”

“Blocked off?”

“The deadbolt was thrown and welded into the locked position, so even with a key it couldn't be opened. Alarm aside, you don't think he came in through the front?”

Barry frowned. “Evidence says he did, it just doesn't make sense. He...he had to take them by surprise, right? But he came in through the door facing them head on.”

“He’s got some brass balls on him, that’s for sure. Could they have been asleep?”

“Not likely,” he shook his head, pointing at an overturned coffee mug on the floor beside the couch, and a phone sitting innocuously on the armchair cushion. “You said Li—victim number two had a gunshot wound, right?”

“Yeah. In her—”

“Right shoulder.” Barry judged, based on what he could see of the couch. He pulled on his gloves and moved closer, stepping over a small mess of blood between the side of the stairs and the coffee table. He pressed his finger to a red soaked hole in the couch. “He must have used a silencer. This isn't the kind of neighborhood that ignores gunshots.”

“That's true. Lots of witnesses...not exactly the kind of place I'd expect Snart to hole up.”

Barry clenched his jaw and fought down the guilt that attacked him at that name. “I think it makes sense,” he said as steadily as he could manage. “The victims were...they were worried. In hiding. They went somewhere nobody would expect them to be...and somewhere that people would call for help if it sounded like anything bad was happening.”

/* _“It’s a dangerous world out there, Flash. Not everyone is as honorable as you are.”_ */

“Barry—”

“Judging by the bloodstain,” Barry continued, cutting off whatever useless reassurance Joe was going to try to give him, “victim number two was shot while she was sitting. It must have been the perp’s opening move. She was in direct sight of the entrance, and given the situation, she would have had her gun near her, but she didn't have time to pick it up before she was hit. Did victim number one have any gunshot wounds?”

“Just one. The M.E. has been held up at another scene, so she hasn't arrived to give an official cause of death yet, but it's pretty obvious the gunshot was it. Her trainee is here if you want to speak to him.”

“That can wait.” Barry took a deep breath. He wanted to close his eyes and pretend he was somewhere else – _anywhere_ else – but he didn't dare for fear of what he might see.

Like Lisa, pushing aside her pride to beg for his help.

Like Len, face stoic but eyes fearful.

He forced the thoughts away with another deep breath. He had to focus.

“Okay,” he said finally, “so the perp shot victim number two before she could react to his appearance. Victim number one _must_ have had time to pick up his gun, but he didn't fire back.”

“The perp had Li—” Joe paused when Barry flinched, and he frowned apologetically. “The perp had _victim number two_ at gunpoint. So victim number one had to drop his weapon.”

Barry shook his head. “No. I mean, yes,” he acknowledged, glancing back and forth despairingly between the armchair and the entrance way, trying to ignore the way his heart rate picked up as he put it all together. “But not at first. The perp had lost the element of surprise, he couldn't have gotten across the room fast enough to guarantee a deadly hit before...before victim number one could blast him with the cold gun.”

“So then how did he do it? Why aren't we dealing with a man shaped block of ice and a single non-fatal gunshot wound instead of...”

/* _“He’s terrified. And so am I.”_ */

Barry was out the door before he had to hear Joe finish his sentence. There were too many officers coming and going for him to risk using his super speed, but he was tempted anyway. He wanted to run; away from the scene, away from the neighborhood. Hell, he wanted to run clear across the city, but a hand gripping his bicep stopped him before he made it to the sidewalk.

He swung around to face Joe, who was looking at him less like a cop at a crime scene, and more like a father worried about his son. “Barry, I know this is hard, but—”

“Joe, he _froze_ ,” Barry snapped, the guilt burning in his lungs so deeply he struggled to breathe. “You want to know how his dad got to his sister before Len could shoot him? _That's_ how. Len was fucking terrified, and he froze up. Lisa told me, she _begged_ me,” he admitted. The memory hit him so hard that the anger fell out of his voice, until he just sounded sad. “She said they didn't think they could fight him and I just...I didn't believe her. But I should have, because I _knew_ something was wrong with Len when he approached me, I knew he was scared and I just told myself he could handle it anyway.”

“You had no way of knowing things would—”

“I _should have listened_ , Joe. I could have saved them.”

Joe sighed. “I know you feel responsible, but—”

“There's no _'but'_ —”

“Would you just stop interrupting me for five seconds?” Joe told him sternly. He put his hands on Barry's shoulders and looked him straight in the eye. “I know you feel responsible,” he repeated, “ _but this is not your fault_. I know it's gonna take a long time for you to accept that, but it's the truth. Barry, I think you should go home. I'll note down what you've found and call someone else in. Hell, tell me who in your department you want to handle this, and I'll get them in here.”

“Forget it,” Barry said stubbornly. “I'm not going anywhere until I've gotten every shred of evidence from this scene. And then, I'll take care of the murderer myself.”

“Barry, this is _not_ a job for—” Joe glanced around and lowered his voice, “— _The Flash_. We're talking about a completely human criminal, not a metahuman. This needs to go through the proper channels.”

“The proper channels let this...this _monster_ out after serving less than half his sentence,” Barry hissed. “Besides, he took down Captain Cold _and_ the Golden Glider, which even The Flash hasn't been able to do properly yet. So yeah, I rate him up there among the metahumans as far as how dangerous he is. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a crime scene to finish working.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please don't kill me.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided to post a bonus chapter because I'm managing to keep a decent buffer of written chapters, and as a thank you for the kind comments and kudos I've been getting.
> 
> Unfortunately most of you will probably consider this chapter more of a punishment than a thank you...so...I'm sorry.

"Victim number two was handcuffed here," Barry said once he’d finished photographing and marking out most of the room. His voice was steady only through sheer force of will and his determination to pretend the victims were complete strangers. 

He gestured to damage on two bannisters about three feet apart. "No sign of the cuffs themselves, but you can see where they scratched along these bannisters when she struggled. And see the…" he hesitated for a moment before pulling himself together, "...the blood on these bannisters between the damaged ones? There’s some skin, and some hair. Looks like the perp slammed her head against here. Several times."

"That’s consistent with the hospital’s initial findings. We don’t have their final report yet, but we know she also had a large amount of swelling and bruising along her face."

"From his fists, probably. Or maybe the butt of his gun." Barry swallowed, glancing to the rear of the room and the white sheet he’d been avoiding like the plague. "He beat her, but kept her alive long enough to watch…" He stopped. He still wasn’t ready to even think about that. "When he was ready to deal with her, he uncuffed her. These scrapes on the floor," he knelt by the coffee table, gesturing to scratches along the solid wood flooring at the feet of the table’s heavy stone carved base, "show that the table was shoved hard. Look at the blood here, it’s disturbed, like someone slid on it. I’d say after he uncuffed her, she slipped in it, or was pushed. She hit the table hard enough to move it. You can see the blood splatter where her head connected with the table top."

Barry looked around again, standing and moving towards a section of wall beneath the staircase. "This scorching is consistent with a high temperature very nearby, but there’s no direct burn to the wall and nothing near it that might have caught fire. But look at these tracks here," he said, pointing at some partial bloody shoe prints. He deliberately ignored how the footprints got darker and more pronounced as they moved back towards the white sheet by the far wall. That would wait. "The perp was standing over Li—over the second victim when a flame hit him, or at least was aimed at him. So he was standing over victim number two when Mick Rory entered. Rory saw what was happening, pulled his gun and blasted a flame. I can’t tell yet if he connected, but since we don’t have a second body I’d say not."

"The uh, the second victim had scorched hair. I’ve got the preliminary list of injuries here if you want to—"

"No. I...no," Barry insisted, shaking his head. "I can...later." He took a moment to re-examine the area and redirect his thought process. "Okay. Then it’s likely the perp had hold of the second victim when Rory came in. That’s why Rory didn’t just set the guy on fire, he aimed a little off so he didn’t hit her. That’s when she fell and hit the table. Rory got distracted by her fall, the perp got his bearings and somehow got past Rory and out the front door."

"And at this point, Snar—our first victim was already dead."

"Yeah," Barry forced out around the lump in his throat. "V-victim number one was the perp’s main target. The...the killer hurt victim number two, then used her to coerce victim number one. He started with the gunshot, probably got a few hits in to keep her pliant, and handcuffed her so she couldn’t get in his way. It would have been easier to cuff her facing the stairs, but he...he cuffed her facing the room so that she could see what was happening."

"He was twisted. And angry. He wanted to punish them both." Joe’s voice was sombre.

/*  _"He’s not going to forget why he was in prison."_ */

"Yeah," Barry said softly, keeping his eyes deliberately away from the far side of the room. "And once she was trapped and watching, he went to work on victim number one."

Barry couldn’t put it off any further. He knew he couldn’t, but he desperately, desperately wanted to.

"I should—I should check upstairs…"

"Barry." Joe’s voice was understanding, but held no room for argument. "It’s not gonna get any easier the longer you leave it."

Barry nodded, jaw tight. He knew Joe was right, but he couldn’t vocalize a response. He slowly backtracked the path that the bloody footprints had left, eyes on them diligently. There was nothing more to learn from them than was already obvious, but every second he spent photographing them and analyzing them was another second that he didn’t have to look at...at…

The white sheet covered most of the body, though there was pooled blood on the floor around it. Barry wished that he could imagine the sheet covered something else. Anything else. But there were a few spots on the crisp white where red was showing through it, and a hand — his right hand, still handcuffed to the radiator — that remained uncovered. 

The wrist was bloody and bruised where the victim had tried desperately to pull against the handcuff, and the rest of the skin was pale. So pale. 

"The...the victim was handcuffed to the radiator, or," Barry looked back over to the couch, trying to piece together the scene, but also trying to delay the inevitable for just a little longer, "or more likely, he was made to handcuff himself. There was a gun to his sister’s head to make him comply, but if the perp had moved away from her before victim number one was restrained, there might have been more of a fight. There are no…no defensive wounds on this hand."

It took some time, both Barry and Joe crouched on the floor near the body while Barry tried to steady his breathing, but eventually he mustered enough courage to nod at Joe, who pulled away the sheet.

_/* "Whatever happens to us now...I hope you know it’s your fault." */_

Barry felt hot, stinging bile rise in the back of his throat, but he swallowed it back with great difficulty. Whatever he’d been expecting, anticipating, dreading...the mangled and brutalized body in front of him was infinitely worse, and it took everything he had to force his gaze to do a fast, perfunctory sweep over the body before he allowed himself to look away.

Barry stared at the blank,  _safe_ wall over Joe’s shoulder while he listed his immediate findings as quickly and with as little emotion as possible.

"The victim’s clothes—" _Len’s clothes_ , his brain screamed unhelpfully at him, "were sliced off roughly. Their state and placement indicate that they were removed after...after the victim was already secured to the radiator. Scraps of his own clothing were stuffed in his mouth, probably to stop his screams from alerting the neighbors. He has extr-extremely severe frostbite to the fingers of his left hand, most likely to render them useless for defending himself." Barry paused, shaking his head miserably. "He was...he was _hamstrung—_ "

"Hamstrung?"

"Th-the perp sliced...he sliced through the tendons behind Len’s—" his voice cracked and he swallowed painfully, "—behind the victim’s knees. It’s a brutal way to incapacitate someone. It was uh...it was referenced several times in the Bible to take down an enemy’s horse, and it was used regularly in the Middle Ages, but it’s just as effective as ever. Even if...even if he could have somehow knocked his f-father out and gotten himself out of the handcuff, he wouldn’t have been able to get very far."

"What about these black circles? And this…" Even Joe’s voice was sounding rougher than usual, but that wasn’t surprising considering the gruesome nature of the injuries. "And this mutilation here?"

Barry knew exactly what Joe was referring to, but he forced himself to look again, to intake the small details on the body — on  _Len’s_ body — that could help shed more light on the exact events.

"They’re all caused by the same weapon," Barry told him. "The cold gun. The circles come from very brief, very precise shots at point blank range, resulting in the final stages of frostbite and the affected areas suffering from necrosis. The...the genital mutilation," Barry had to pause for a moment, had to fight off the urge to be sick, or to cry, "w-was caused in a similar way, but you can tell the gun was held from farther back. It’s more...more widespread, like he wanted to do more damage. I-I don’t know… I don’t… How could _anyone_ —"

_/* "He’s a living, breathing person, who needs your help enough to ask in spite of our history with you." */_

"I can’t believe I’m asking this," Joe interrupted, thankfully cutting Barry off before he could let the thoughts and memories fester too deeply, "but why wasn’t the victim frozen? Isn’t that what usually happens when someone’s hit with that gun?"

"Short exposure time," Barry replied, trying to blink back the tears he could feel building. "Remember Cisco’s brother? It’s like his hands. Worse, but...for all these wounds the cold flame wasn’t applied for long enough to form blocks of ice. You uh, you can tell by the large pool of blood under him that his tendons were cut first. The cuts and stab wounds came later. Judging by the relatively minor amount of bleeding from them, they were made after the cold gun torture, but before...before he was murdered."

"Sounds almost like mercy to me," Joe muttered under his breath, and Barry couldn’t help the noise of outrage and disbelief that escaped him.

"I did _not_ mean it like that," Joe told him immediately and sincerely. "I just meant that after all _this,_ " he gestured all around the body, "that _that_ must have been a relief." Joe was nodding at Len’s head, at the spot Barry had glanced at but refused to let himself look at a second time.

Barry took a long, shaky breath, then forced his gaze back to Len’s face.

Len’s eyes were still open, looking painfully like the last time Barry had seen them; wide and icy, except instead of holding fear and pleading behind a veil of arrogance, they were dull and empty.

_Lifeless._

Those eyes shouldn’t be his focus, Barry knew, he should be paying attention to the fatal gunshot wound right between them, but he couldn’t look away.

_/* "Some hero you are." */_

"I’m sorry, Len," he whispered, voice broken. "I’m _so_ sorry."


	6. Chapter 6

Barry slumped in his seat as he ended the call, trying not to let his emotions get the better of him. He was done testing the evidence he’d collected, but he hadn’t even started double-checking his conclusions against his photos from the scene, and the report from the M.E. could come in at any moment.

“I’ve got a BOLO out on Lewis Snart, and on the missing weapons,” came Joe's voice from the door. “Was there anything in the forensics linking him to the scene?”

 _Pull yourself together_ , Barry told himself silently. _You don’t have the time to fall apart._

“Is everything okay, Barr?” Joe was beside him and wincing apologetically by the time Barry glanced up. “Aside from the obvious, I mean.”

“Yeah,” Barry started, but his voice came out weak and — judging by the look on Joe’s face — unconvincing. “No,” he sighed. “I just told Cisco and Caitlin about...about what happened. Caitlin is trying to find a way to track down Mick Rory so I can find out more, or if he has any idea where to find Lewis Snart. It’s a long shot, though.”

“And Cisco?” Joe asked, leaning against the edge of Barry’s desk.

Barry hesitated. He wasn’t sure exactly how upset Cisco was, or whether Joe would even understand why.

“He uh...he walked out. Caitlin doesn’t know where he went.”

“Really? _Cisco?_ ”

“He’s devastated. The whole thing with him and Lisa...he tries to pretend it doesn’t matter, but he has feelings for her, you know? He plays it off like it’s just because she’s attractive, but it’s more than that. I think the only thing that’s been stopping him from falling head over heels in love with her is that she’s a criminal.”

“Yeah,” Joe said, eying Barry pointedly. “There seems to be a lot of that going around.”

The insinuation was clear, and it made Barry’s nerves spike.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he cringed internally the moment the words were out of his mouth — he sounded far more defensive than he should have, and it was obvious that Joe thought so too.

“Oh come on, Barr. I know you better than that. Hell, sometimes I know you better than you know yourself. I get that you’re feeling guilty, but don’t even try to act like that’s all this is. The way you reacted today…” Joe hesitated. He shifted, pulling a chair up so he could sit eye level with Barry. “Be honest with me. How long have you been in love with Snart?”

“I am _not_ in love with—”

“Okay!” Joe interrupted Barry before he could shout his denials to half the floor. “Calm down. So then how long have you had feelings for him? Don’t lie to me about this, coz you know I’m not gonna buy it. Besides, he’s intelligent, witty and stubborn, which is obviously your type.”

“I…” Barry wanted to deny it. He wanted to argue, because he was The Flash, and Len had been Captain Cold, and what kind of an idiot develops feelings for someone who lies, steals, and hurts people? But Joe’s expression wasn’t giving him any wiggle room and eventually he sighed, sinking even lower into his chair and resting his head on the top of the seat back. “I don’t know how long.”

“Alright then...when did you realize?”

“I didn’t,” Barry said quietly. He’d been in denial, probably for a while, and it went so deep he’d been blindsided when it hit him. “Not until I...until he was...Joe, by the time I left his body with the M.E., I just...” There was a lump in his throat, growing bigger and more painful with every word. “I feel like someone tore out my insides and shoved them back in wrong. I can’t...I can’t stop seeing his face. His eyes. Joe, I…”

“Hey. _Hey_.” Joe was holding out a tissue, and Barry was startled to realize his eyes were brimming. He took it, pressing it roughly into his eyes like he could use brute force to shove the tears back where they belonged. “Barry, it’s okay to f—”

“It’s not okay! _Nothing_ about this is okay!!” He scrunched the tissue up into a tiny ball and threw it carelessly in the direction of his trashcan. Then, he took a deep, shaky breath and lowered his voice. “Joe, I should have saved him.”

“Barry, you can _not_ torture yourself like this. I know it’s awful, and believe me, you’re more than entitled to fall apart over losing someone you care about, but you have _got_ to stop blaming yourself for what happened. You had good reason for not trusting him. What’s done is done. There’s nothing you can do now except help stop Lewis Snart.”

Everything Joe said made so much sense, except it was all wrong at the same time. Joe was a good cop, and a great dad, but he saw everything more simply than Barry had been able to in a long time.

And the fact was, Barry could do something about it.

Barry _would_ do something about it.

“You’re wrong,” he told Joe. “I’m going to fix this.”

“How do you plan to…” Joe’s voice drifted off as realization dawned on his face. “Barry, no. You can’t go back and change things! What if something goes wrong?”

“Nothing can go more wrong than this, Joe!”

“So...you’re just gonna _what_? Run back and tell your past self to help Cold?”

“I don’t think there’ll be a past me...I’m pretty sure it’ll just be _me_ me, back where I was, whenever I run back to…”

Joe was staring at him in disbelief, and Barry shifted uncomfortably. He knew he wasn’t making a great argument, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was undoing what he’d let happen.

“Okay, fine, so you just hide out in the bushes in front of the safe house until Snart senior turns up, is that it?”

Barry sighed. He should have kept his mouth shut, should have just run back and fixed everything without a word to Joe, but he was so sick of lying and hiding things.

“When I ran back that time, everything changed for the better. Wells didn’t murder Cisco, and there was no tsunami...I know it’s a risk, but it’ll only be a few days and all I need to do is stop their father from hurting them. I won’t do anything else differently. Just...just that.”

“And how do you plan on stopping it? Because let me be real clear here, you are _not_ just gonna hide and wait. If you’re gonna do something so reckless and stupid, you better at _least_ have a plan.”

“I don’t have a plan _yet_ ,” he said, “but I’m not going to run back until I do, okay? I need to speak to Mick Rory, and hopefully Lisa wakes up soon, because if anyone can tell me anything useful it’ll be her. I’m still waiting on the M.E. report from Dr. Jennings as well. That’s three different leads...there’s gotta be something helpful among them, right? And I can backtrack from there. Once I know how he found them and got in, then I can go back and stop him before it happened.”

“For the record, I think you’re insane.” Joe gave Barry a half smile. “But I get it.” It wasn’t a resounding show of support, but it was enough. And, if he were being honest, it was more than Barry had expected considering the situation. “So what _have_ we got so far? Anything?”

Barry shook his head. “Aside from _knowing_ it was their father? No. At least, nothing in the evidence linking him, yet. He didn’t leave any usable fingerprints, and all the blood at the scene belonged to...to Len and Lisa.”

“Well, he’s an ex-cop, he’d know to wear gloves. Although, if he were smart, he’d have waited. I mean, it’s kind of obvious who has motive when a guy gets out of prison for child abuse, and the kids wind up dead or in hospital a week later.”

Barry flinched. It was hard enough for him to acknowledge what had happened, and especially whom it had happened to, but it was even worse when the people around him spoke like it was just another crime to solve. Like it hadn’t damaged their lives in the same way it had done to Barry’s.

 _Of course it hasn’t_ , Barry reminded himself. _It’s not personal for them. Not even for Joe._

“To be honest,” he said, forcing himself into professional mode, “I don’t think he was wearing gloves. And I doubt he was too concerned about being caught.” Barry flipped through the crime scene photos, pausing on one of the cuffs around Len’s wrist. “It looks like he didn’t touch anything that he didn’t take with him, except around...around Len. There’s a smudged partial print here on the handcuff around his right wrist. It definitely doesn’t match Lisa or Len, but there’s not enough of it undamaged to accurately match as our killer’s, either.”

“You think there’s any chance of the M.E. finding anything?”

“I hope so. I asked her to get someone to check for fingerprints on his skin, and especially around his left wrist. I think he might have held Len at the wrist while he...while he used the gun. I know I should do it myself, but I...I just can’t...” he clenched his jaw, fighting back the stinging that was starting in his eyes once more. He hadn’t been able to do his job properly, at least not where Len’s brutalized body was concerned. It had been hard enough to work the rest of the scene, and to do an initial analysis of what had happened to Len, he just wasn’t strong enough for the rest. He’d spoken to Dr. Jennings about his suspicions and he had no choice but to trust her and the other forensic techs to find anything that might have been left behind.

Barry’s phone rang.

“Anyway,” he said, clearing his throat as he picked up his phone, “we should have the report soon, and any trace evidence along with it.” He checked the screen. “It’s Caitlin.” Joe nodded and Barry picked up. “Hey, find anything?”

“In a manner of speaking, though it’s more like something found me. Mick Rory is outside. He’s yelling at the cameras and, well, okay, now he’s _inside_ —”

“Stay safe, I’ll be there in a minute.”

Barry signaled to Joe that he had to run and headed straight for S.T.A.R. Labs.

* * *

When Barry arrived at S.T.A.R. Labs in his Flash suit he was relieved to see nothing was on fire, although Rory was waving his gun around and demanding to see The Flash.

“I’m right here,” Barry said angrily as he slid to a stop in front of Caitlin, blocking her from the path of the heat gun.

“I’m going to just…” he heard behind him, followed by Caitlin’s quick footsteps as she rushed out of the lab.

“Great. So you _are_ still in the habit of helping people. Good to know.” Mick glared at Barry, the gun in his hand twitching like he couldn’t decide whether to aim it or keep it by his side. He grunted in frustration. “You know what happened last night, right?”

“Why don’t _you_ tell _me_?” Barry snapped, suddenly furious when faced with a man who’d been at the scene of the crime and walked away unscathed. “I thought you were their friend! So where the hell were you?”

There was a loud, angry roar and Mick raised his gun, but Barry took it from him and placed it on a desk nearby before he could pull the trigger. They stared each other down for several moments, Mick glaring daggers at Barry while Barry’s heart raced with fury.

“Why weren’t you there?” Barry demanded. He was yelling at Mick, practically shaking with how mad he was.

Mick laughed darkly. There was no humor there, only barely restrained rage. “You have got _some_ nerve blaming me. Len asked for your help. You chose not to give it. Where exactly were _you_ when Len and Lisa needed you, hmm?”

“That’s different,” Barry answered, but it was a weak argument and he knew it. “They knew I wouldn’t be there. But you were meant to be, weren’t you?” He regretted the words as soon as he’d said them; Mick was right, he could have helped and he chose not to. And it wasn’t fair of Barry to try and pass some of his own guilt onto someone else.

_/* “Who you’re really mad at is yourself.” */_

“I _was_ there. For days. I spent every hour cooped up in that little house doing nothing but sitting on my hands. I hated it. Burned me up on the inside to just _wait_. But I did it to protect my friends.” Mick clenched his jaw and made a low, angry noise. “They got _sick_ of me, said I was getting ‘em both riled up. Told me to take a walk, get some food, burn something somewhere downtown. I wasn’t even gone a whole hour.”

Barry couldn’t argue with that. How could he? Mick had tried to help them, and that was far more than Barry had done.

“It’s ironic,” Mick added. “He kept it quiet, but I could tell. Len _believed_ in you. Thought you were a hero.” He scoffed low in his throat. “Always thought somewhere deep down you’d turn up to save the day. Even after the times you didn’t. Even after you told him no.”

“I know I should have helped,” Barry said, anger crumbling. “I didn’t...I didn’t trust Len after what happened at Ferris Air, but that’s no excuse. And I’m sorry for...for trying to blame you. This is on me, not you.”

“Damn right,” Mick grunted. He eyed Barry warily, but then he growled to himself and slammed his fist down on the desk beside him. He made no move to damage anything else, just stared at his own hand for a moment before he spoke again. “I shouldn’t have gone out. But Len insisted, and he can be — _could_ be — such an ass.”

Mick moved away from the desk and started pacing. “When I got back that piece of scum had Lisa by the hair. She was hurt bad. I shot at him but I didn’t want to hit her. Then he punched her and she fell. Slipped on the way down. She landed real hard.”

“On the table.”

“Yeah. How did you know that?” Mick stopped and frowned. “I thought she was dead. I was ready to burn him to the ground, but then Lisa made this noise. This _awful_ noise. I had to get her to the hospital. Len was already dead, but he would have wanted me to make sure she was okay.”

Barry had so many questions, but he wasn’t sure how many of them Mick would be able to answer. “I’ve been to...to the crime scene. I had a look around but I didn’t find much that would help. Did you notice anything out of the ordinary when you left? Or can you think of a way Lewis Snart could have found you?”

“You think I’m that stupid? If I had noticed anything, I wouldn’t have left. I don’t know how he found us. Hell, I don’t know how he got inside. That house had all kinds of security and Len was smart about picking places.” Mick furrowed his brow for a moment, then shook his head in frustration. “I keep thinking he must have been watching. Waiting for a chance. It’s the only thing that makes sense, too much coincidence otherwise, but how’d he even know where we were? Besides, I was _careful_. No one could have seen me leaving. There’s a reason I’m still walking around instead of in prison.”

“So, you don’t know where he might have come from? Where he was staying? Anything?”

Mick growled a negative, then snatched up his gun and started pacing again. “Nothing. I just keep wondering...how’d he know to use the front door? Back would have been smarter to sneak in, but Len or Lisa would have heard if he tried.”

“The guy was a cop once,” Barry said. “He probably cased the place. If he figured out where your safe houses were, maybe he checked it out before the three of you even got there? With that alarm he must have had a keycard, or at least known how to disable it, so it makes sense.”

Mick shook his head. “No, it doesn’t. The alarm does, but not the rest. The kitchen door wasn’t alarmed.”

“But the lock was welded shut.”

“Not before. I melted it after we got there. He could not have known that.”

Barry was going to have to go back to the crime scene. If what Mick said was true, something didn’t add up. Barry was going to figure out how Snart senior found them and got inside, even if he had to search every nook and cranny of the city to find where he was holed up and get some answers out of him that way.

“I’m going to find him.”

“You do that. And then I’m gonna let my flames kiss every inch of his skin. He’ll scream while his flesh cooks on his bones. It will be beautiful.” Mick gazed at the gun in his hands reverently. “Trial by fire.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry. Again.

Barry nodded at the officers guarding the room. He didn’t have a good excuse for being there, but they knew him. Besides, he was technically part of the team assigned to the case, so he had no trouble getting past them. He knocked on the door and after a few seconds he pushed it open hesitantly.

Cisco dragged his eyes up from the bed, brows drawing together angrily when he saw Barry. “What are _you_ doing here?” The accusation in his voice stung, and Barry flinched.

“I just...Joe called,” he said as he entered the room and closed the door behind him. “He told me the officers reported that Lisa’s fiancé was here. I figured it was probably you.”

“It was the only way I could get in. Are you gonna rat me out?” Cisco asked, choosing to stare back down at Lisa’s face rather than meet Barry’s eyes again.

“No, of course not. I wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

Cisco laughed, but it sounded nothing like him. It was dark and humorless, and there were tears in his eyes fighting to spill over. “ _I’m_ not the one you should check on.”

“I’m _so_ sorry,” Barry forced out, more to Lisa than Cisco. He took a few more steps into the room and looked her over. Her face was a mess of bruises and swelling, and her head was wrapped in bandages. She was completely motionless and the blanket was tucked under her arms. They looked mostly undamaged save for a few small bruises, although her wrists and hands were bandaged heavily.

“You _should_ be sorry,” Cisco said quietly. His hand was resting carefully on Lisa’s forearm, just above the dressings on her wrist, like he wanted to hold her hand but couldn’t.

“Cisco, I—”

“Don’t.” Cisco heaved a deep, shaky breath, taking a quick and violent sweep at his eyes with the back of his free hand. “I know, okay? I know you didn’t mean for...for this. And I know it’s not really your fault, but I’m just...I’m so mad right now. So you should leave before I say anything I’ll regret.”

“I can’t do that. This _is_ my fault.”

“Yeah, well, the really, really angry part of me agrees with you. But...but we — me and Caitlin — we agreed with you. I didn’t _like_ it, but I agreed. So, if it’s your fault, then it’s my fault too, and I can’t...I can’t deal with that.”

“No. No, Cisco, you gave her back her gun! You—”

“Yeah,” Cisco snapped. “I gave her that gun. I made it, and I made the cold gun too. I’m the reason those weapons were in that house, which means...it means that I’m the reason that her father had access to that kind of firepower. Did you know that the doctors had to surgically remove gold casings from her hands? She lost four fingernails, sixty-five percent of the skin on her fingers and palms, and she’s got second degree frostbite on her feet. Barry, _none of that_ would have happened without those guns.”

Barry had no idea what to say. It was true, there were certain things that Lewis Snart couldn’t have done without Cisco’s weapons, but Barry had analyzed the crime scene, and he knew without a doubt that even without them, he’d have found some other way to cause as much damage as possible.

“Her father is a monster, Cisco,” Barry said eventually. “Even without your guns, he’d have found a way to do something just as bad. This isn’t your fault. I’m the one who...I should have helped them.”

“Yeah, you should have.” Cisco nodded, but then he shook his head sadly and shrugged. “But it made sense not to.” He took another deep breath, a little steadier than before, but Barry could see how close Cisco was to falling apart. “You know...the doctors aren’t even sure if she’ll be able to walk again.”

Barry’s stomach sank. “What?”

“They said she fractured two of her lower thoracic vertebrae. From...from a severe blow to her back. They gave her an MRI and they said it looks like...like the fractured bone fragments have caused damage to her spinal cord. They won’t…” he took another slow, deep breath, “they won’t know for sure if she’ll need spinal surgery, or...or how restrictive the damage will be to her mobility until she wakes up.”

Cisco rubbed at his eyes. There were tears running down his cheeks, and Barry could feel his own eyes burning in response.

“I’m...I’m going to fix this,” he told Cisco. He meant it — he couldn’t stand knowing that he was responsible for Lisa being so badly hurt.

Or that he was responsible for what had happened to Len.

“If she can’t walk on her own again,” Cisco continued like he hadn’t heard Barry speak, “I’ll build her something so she can. Like...like the A.T.O.M. suit, but just for, you know, walking. Unless she _wants_ to fly,” he corrected, words tumbling out rapidly. “If that’s what she wants, I’ll make it happen. I got a lot of good ideas from that suit. Then she could _really_ be a...a Golden Glider. I think she’d like that.” Cisco’s voice broke on the nickname she’d begged him for, and he hunched over, pressing his forehead to her arm for a minute before looking back up at Barry. “I don’t care what she’s done, Barry. Not anymore. I just need her to be okay.”

“I know.” Barry wanted to commiserate, wanted to tell Cisco that he understood. That he’d feel the same way if Len was still— if Len was the one fighting for his life. That in Cisco’s position, Barry would do anything he could to make it better.

But Cisco didn’t need to worry about what Barry was feeling; he needed to focus on himself and on Lisa.

“Cisco, listen to me. _I’m going to fix this_.”

Cisco met his eyes and Barry could see the moment that his meaning became clear. “What do you need me to do?”

“Nothing yet. I need to find out everything I can about what happened so I can...so I can make this better.”

“Good. I don’t care what anyone else says,” Cisco told him urgently, jaw tight and eyes imploring. “Caitlin will hate it. Joe too, probably. But if you can fix this, Barry, you’ve _got_ to.”

* * *

Barry paced back and forth beside his desk, several evidence bags clutched in his hand. He’d just gotten back from Len’s safe house. The scene had been taped off, and the only officers still around were outside maintaining the perimeter, so Barry had been able to sneak in and search every single inch of the place as The Flash.

It was late, late enough that he should probably have already left for the day, but he was impatient to share what he’d found, and he knew Joe wouldn’t leave until Barry did.

When Joe finally walked through the door with a manila folder under his arm, Barry hurried him over and dumped the bags on the desk in front of him.

“Uh...what am I looking at?”

“I went back to the crime scene,” Barry told him, sliding into his chair. “When I spoke to Rory, what he said made something click in my head. So I searched the whole place, top to bottom.”

“And you found something.”

“I found lots of somethings. Remember when Wells was always a step ahead of us and we couldn’t understand how he just _knew_ things?”

Understanding spread across Joe’s face. “There were bugs?”

“There were bugs.”

Barry separated the bags so that Joe could see them all. Seven different cameras and five microphones, all of which he’d found hidden around the house.

“Rory said that they’d been hiding out in that house for days, and that he was only gone for an hour before he came back to find...what had happened. _These_ are how Snart knew to make his move. He must have been watching and just waiting for the right time. Joe, if we can track these, maybe they can lead us back to him.”

“That’s great, Barr. I’m gonna get on that straight away.” Joe started sifting through the bags, and then he frowned. “But we still don’t know how he knew _where_ they were.”

“I know,” Barry said, “but it’s more than we knew an hour ago.”

“Speaking of…” Joe began, but he let his words trail off as he took a seat near Barry. He looked uncomfortable, the way he always did when he had news Barry wouldn’t want to hear.

“What is it?” Barry asked worriedly.

“The M.E.’s report came back while you were out.”

“And? Do you have it with you? Did she find anything?”

Joe put the folder on Barry’s desk with a deep furrow in his brow. His expression was somewhere between hesitant and worried, and it made Barry shift uncomfortably in his seat.

“Dr. Jennings had Anderson check for prints and...and trace evidence on the body. He ran everything he found. We got our proof; Lewis Snart’s definitely our perp.”

“That’s...that’s good.” Whatever miniscule possibility existed that Barry wasn’t to blame went out the window with that announcement, but it didn’t come as any kind of surprise. “I mean, I already knew, but it’s good we have some physical evidence linking him now.” Barry started to open the folder, but before he could, Joe placed a heavy hand across it, trapping it closed on the desk.

“Barry, I don’t think you wanna read that,” he said softly.

“Well no, probably not,” Barry acknowledged, “but I have to. If I’m going to find and stop Sn—”

“Just trust me, okay? There’s _nothing_ in there that’ll help you find Snart senior.” His voice sent a spark of worry down Barry’s spine. He knew that voice. That was the voice that Joe used when he told Barry that his dad was going to prison, when he told Barry that the yellow and red lightning he saw hurting his mother wasn’t real, when he told Barry that Iris would be in danger if she knew Barry was The Flash.

That was the voice that meant bad things, but Barry couldn’t imagine what could possibly be worse than anything else he’d been confronted with that day.

“Joe, just tell me whatever it is. What are you trying to hide from me?”

“It’s not that I’m trying to hide anything from you, Barr. I just think you’d be better off not...you don’t need to torture yourself with this.”

“Move your hand, Joe,” he demanded.

“Barr—”

Barry was across the room with the folder, reading the contents in less than a second. It fell from his fingers, the paperwork inside scattering across the floor as he slid to the ground with his back to the wall.

He had to fight to calm the rebellion in his stomach, to force each breath in and out of his lungs. He was getting dangerously close to a panic attack, he realized suddenly.

But he couldn’t panic, not when he still had so much to fix. _Deep, even breaths_ , he told himself. _Don’t forget to exhale._

In. _Two, three, four._

Out. _Two, three, four._

When the immediate danger had passed, he glanced at Joe and he felt himself crumbling in the face of Joe’s sympathy.

“H-he...that…” Barry didn’t have the words for what he wanted to say, he just let out a sharp, pained noise as he pulled his knees to his chest, folding his arms across them so he had somewhere to rest his head. Somewhere to hide.

“I’m sorry, Barry.” Joe’s voice was nearby, but Barry couldn’t bring himself to look up. He understood, now, what Joe had been trying to shield him from, and he desperately wished he had listened.

But at the same time, if he was going to go back and stop...stop _all of it_ , he had to know everything he could.

“Barry...?”

He knew what Joe was asking, but Barry couldn’t tell him he’d be okay when he had no idea if that were even true.

“ _Why?!_ ” he asked, scrubbing his face furiously against his sleeve until it was wet with his tears. “Why would he…why would _anyone...?_ ”

“I’ve never been able to answer that question,” Joe said honestly, voice low and sad, “and I don’t think I ever will.”

“He was Len’s _father_.”

“That man was _no_ father,” Joe told him seriously. “I don’t give a damn about biology, he doesn’t deserve that title.” He was quiet for a moment, then Barry felt a warm hand on his shoulder. “I called the hospital to tell them...well, to let them know they might need to do a rape kit on Lisa. Just in case.”

Barry nodded. He ran his hands through his hair, tugging sharply in an attempt to distract himself from the maelstrom in his head.

_/* “Some hero you are.” */_

When he looked up, Joe was frowning at him, like he could read his mind. “Barry, this is _not_ your fault.”

Barry wanted to argue, wanted to tell Joe all the reasons why it was _absolutely_ his fault, but it hurt too much to think about, and there were too many other things he had to focus on so that he could make everything okay again.

“I don’t...I don’t think he touched Lisa like that,” Barry said eventually, swallowing around the lump in his throat and trying to breathe slowly, evenly, to calm his rebelling stomach. “Rory found him with her, he would have said if...if she wasn’t dressed, or if he thought that…”

“You’re probably right. It’s just a precaution.”

“How do I...how am I gonna…?” Barry pressed his palms into his eyes furiously, trying to stop the tears from reappearing. And trying not to imagine what Len had suffered through. If he was going to hold it together and be of any use at all...he just couldn’t think about that. “When Lisa wakes up...Joe, he did that to his own son, to her brother, and he made her _watch_. And now Len’s gone, and she...she might end up in a wheelchair. And this is all my— How am I gonna face her?”

Joe’s phone beeped and he checked it quickly. “I know it’s gonna be hard, Barry, but if you’re really determined to run back and fix it, you’re going to have to speak to her. And it’s going to be soon, because that was Officer Diaz. Lisa woke up a few minutes ago. The doctors are doing some tests at the moment, but she should be capable of answering our questions in the morning.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I shouldn't be posting this yet because I'm going to chew through my buffer of completed chapters too fast, but last night's ep was amazing and I have no self control.
> 
> Also, I'm extremely creeped out by how similar some of the lines in ep 2.03 were to things that are already written into future chapters...it's weird.

Unlike the last time he entered the hospital room, Barry wasn’t just approaching a friend who was upset; he had to face someone who had suffered terribly as a result of the choices he had made. The weight of that knowledge was heavy on his shoulders, but he forced himself into the room, regardless.

Lisa was awake and unexpectedly alert for someone who had to be on a lot of pain medication. Barry glanced at Cisco, who looked rumpled and tired. He was wearing the same clothes as the day before, and Barry doubted he’d left the room for more than a bathroom break since he’d arrived the previous morning.

When he looked back over at Lisa she was staring at him in confusion; it wasn’t until Barry had shut the door and reached her bedside that he realized why.

He wasn’t wearing his Flash suit. She had no idea who he was.

That could be his out, he knew. He could get all the information he needed from her as an employee of the CCPD without her ever knowing he was also The Flash. He was even pretty sure that Cisco would back him up on that.

But Barry didn’t deserve an out.

“Hi,” he started, but then he floundered. It wasn’t like other times he’d told someone his secret; Barry only knew Lisa as one of the bad guys and trusting her didn’t come easily, even after the last twenty-four hours had changed his view of so many things.

“Lisa, you remember my friend Barry, don’t you?” Cisco said a little nervously.

“Yeah. From the bar, right? The night Cisco and I met.”

“That’s right,” Barry answered. “But uh, we’ve met a few times since then.”

It took a minute, in which Barry was mentally preparing himself to just come out and say it, but then her expression shifted from uncertain to angry. “I suppose we have. I know that voice. Get the hell out.”

“I can’t do that,” Barry told her, trying to shove every shred of remorse he was feeling into his voice so she would understand just how terrible he felt. “I know you don’t want to see me, and that’s...that’s more than fair. I understand that. But I need to—”

“You’re damn right I don’t want to see you,” she cut in, voice wobbly. “And I don’t care _what_ you need. If I could, I’d— You’re lucky I’m too injured and exhausted and on too many painkillers to follow through with any of the ways I want to make you suffer.” Her words were sharp but she was _crying_. Barry had no idea how to handle that, but he could feel the guilt twisting in his stomach until he thought he might end up doing the same. “But you _should_ stay,” she added, icily, doing an excellent job of ignoring the tears streaming down her own cheeks. “Let me tell you everything my fucked up father did to me. And t-to Lenny. Since it’s the only way I can hurt you for now, I want to see the look on your face when you find out everything you’re responsible for.”

“I already know.”

“You cannot _possibly_ —”

“Barry’s a forensic tech with the Central City Police Department,” Cisco interrupted, voice gentle. “He’s the one they called to your...to the crime scene.”

“Lisa, I’m _so sorry_. I know that’s not enough—”

“Sorry won’t bring my brother back.” The words were harsh and deliberate, and very clearly a dismissal, but Barry couldn’t leave.

“No, it won’t,” Barry acknowledged, chest tightening at the memory of Len’s lifeless eyes and pale, abused skin. “But _I_ will. I swear.”

She laughed, but it was sharp and mocking. Scornful. “And how exactly do you propose to do that? Do you have a metahuman that can raise the dead tucked away on that fucked up island you wanted to abandon everyone on?”

Barry hesitated, but only for a moment. If everything worked out the way he hoped, it wouldn’t matter how much he told Lisa, because she wouldn’t remember it. And if it didn’t, well, what did Barry care anymore? She could blackmail him, or take advantage of him to her heart’s content, but there was nothing... _nothing_ he could ever do for her that could make up for what she’d lost because of him.

“I can change the past,” he admitted. “Run back in time and stop what your father did before it actually happened.”

Lisa laughed again, twisted and bitter and angry, until she saw the look on Cisco’s face. She darted her eyes between Cisco and Barry, before finally speaking in a demanding, no-nonsense tone. “Are you serious? You can do that? You can stop him from—?”

“I can.”

Her face lost some of the misery that had been there since Barry first walked in. Instead, she turned contemplative, then after a moment narrowed her eyes at Barry. “Then why haven’t you?”

“I need…” Barry shook his head, hating what he had to ask of her. “I know this is going to be difficult, but I need you to tell me everything. I mean I...I know what happened. But I need the details. Things he said, what he wore. Anything he did that might not have been picked up by the evidence at the scene. Just anything I can use to figure out how he found you and where he was hiding out before hand, or where he might be now. _Anything_ at all, Lisa. I want to stop him before he even gets to the safe house, but I need all the information I can get.”

“Alright.” She swallowed audibly. “Cisco, baby, would you please get me something from the cafeteria?” She forced out a tremulous smile, then added in a tone more familiar, “Something sweet, like you?”

“You’re on an IV,” Cisco told her. “You’re not meant to ingest anything.”

“Then can you please just go away for half an hour? Not that I don’t love having you with me while I’m in bed and all that.”

Cisco hesitated, squeezing her forearm gently. “I don’t want to leave you.”

“And I don’t want to say any of this in front of you.”

The look on Cisco’s face was brutal. Barry had to glance away, because seeing the normally happy Cisco looking so hurt was another layer of crappy that he didn’t need to add to everything else he was already struggling with.

“Don’t make that face, cutie,” Lisa said. “I’m not trying to keep anything from you. Flash here can tell you anything you want to know, but I refuse to see you react while you hear it. The perpetual sad face you’ve had since I woke up is bad enough, I _cannot_ deal with worse.”

Cisco clenched his jaw, but he nodded. “Okay.” He nodded again. “Yeah. I can go. But I’ll be back in _exactly_ thirty minutes.”

She smiled shakily at him, a softer smile than Barry had ever seen on her face. “I’m counting on it.”

Cisco gave her a shy grin, and then turned to Barry. “Take it easy on her.”

“Of course.”

With that, Cisco stood and took five steps towards the door before he froze, turned around with squared shoulders and walked quickly back to Lisa’s bedside. When he got there, he dropped a quick, soft kiss on the small patch of unharmed skin between her eyebrows. By the time he’d straightened up, the determination on his face was faltering and he stared at Lisa awkwardly. “I’ll uh...I’ll be back soon.”

He was out the door within seconds. Barry took the seat that Cisco had left and turned his attention to Lisa, who was still staring at the closed door with a tiny, sad smile.

“You really like him,” Barry said in surprise. His stomach turned at the thought of how much hurt could have been avoided, how much they could have done differently if he’d known his own feelings for Len, if Cisco had known that Lisa wasn’t just playing with him.

“You’re only just figuring that out? For somebody so damn fast, you’re awfully slow.”

She was being snide, but she looked trapped and vulnerable, like she hated that Barry knew something so personal about her. He wanted to say or do something to make her feel less self-conscious, to make her feel comfortable with him. The things they had to talk about would be personal and confronting, and he needed her to, maybe not forgive him, but at least stop attacking him enough to open up. But there was only one thing he could think of, and he still wasn’t sure how to say it out loud.

“Give me a break,” he joked, rubbing his clammy palms on the legs of his jeans, strangely terrified of what he was about to admit to her. He didn’t know how it could be harder than telling her he was The Flash, or that he could travel back in time, but somehow it was. “I didn’t even know my _own_ feelings until yesterday. I can be kind of dense sometimes.”

“Aww,” she cooed nastily, “you have feelings for Cisco, too?”

“No,” he said, ignoring the way his heart was racing and his voice was shaky. “For Len.”

Even through the myriad of bruises and swelling, Barry could see all traces of the sadness still on her face get swallowed with rage as her expression went rock hard. “That’s _not_ funny.”

“It wasn’t meant to be,” Barry told her honestly. “I think...I think that’s why I was so...so _angry_ by what happened at Ferris Air. I was hurt...my...my _feelings_ were hurt when Len betrayed me.”

“So you let my brother be _tortured and killed_ because he broke your heart?”

“No!” Barry blurted out in horror. “Of _course_ not.” He rubbed the back of his neck roughly, trying to get rid of the prickle of nerves and guilt under his skin. He leaned forward in his seat, and looked her right in the eye in the hope that she could see how honest he was being. “Lisa, I _meant_ what I said to you back at S.T.A.R. Labs. I wanted to help. I did. I just couldn’t risk my friends and family. I couldn’t risk the city. Not after what happened last time we made an alliance.” Barry could feel his eyes starting to burn and his throat closing. He’d thought he’d cried himself out before getting to the hospital, but he could feel all that sadness and regret trying to claw its way back to the surface. “I cannot tell you how sorry I am, or how much I regret not helping. I can’t...when I saw...yesterday morning, I just…”

“If you’re just saying this to get me on your side, don’t bother,” Lisa said stiffly, although she was watching him curiously as he wiped at his eyes. “I’ll do whatever I can to save my brother, even if it means working with you.”

“I mean every word.”

She studied his face carefully for several moments and then she gave him a sad, but still guarded, look. “What a shitty way to figure out how you feel.”

“Yeah.”

“That doesn’t get you off the hook. This is still your fault.”

“Believe me,” Barry said, voice cracking, “I know.”

Barry took a minute to compose himself, drying his eyes and steadying his breathing, while Lisa stared silently at the blank television screen on the opposite wall, apparently deep in thought.

“I don’t want to push,” Barry said eventually, “but Cisco will be back in—” He checked his watch. “—less than twenty-three minutes.”

“Wait. First, while we’re being so honest, I should tell you something. It’s about what happened at Ferris Air.”

Barry wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to know, but he had to ask. “What is it?”

She hesitated, but not for long. “Lenny didn’t really plan all that just to get the advantage. That was part of it, but there was more to it. Everything with Lenny has... _had_...layers, you know.”

He wanted to tell her that he’d noticed, that that was why he refused to help them, but he couldn’t say so. Instead, he just nodded and she continued.

“When we were kids,” she started, but then she stopped and grimaced. “Never mind, that’s not important. The thing is...Lenny and I….we couldn’t stand the idea of people getting locked up all alone, nowhere to move around, no one to interact with. Look, I’m not stupid; I know those prisoners were all dangerous, but the way you were keeping them was wrong...and the way you were planning to lock them away on that island was even worse. It was just...it was inhumane.”

Barry nodded slowly. He’d heard as much from Joe, and if he was being honest with himself he felt the same way whenever he let himself think about it. “It was never meant to be long term. We wanted to find another option. The cells...they were only ever meant to be temporary, just until we could rehabilitate the metas. But things just...they just kept happening. And then their lives were in danger and the only other option we had was Lian Yu.”

“‘ _Things kept happening’_ is not a good enough excuse, Flash.”

“No, you’re right. It’s not.”

There was nothing else he could say, because she was right. They should have done more, should have found another way before they were put on the spot by Wells’ crazy scheme with the particle accelerator.

It was just one more regret on Barry’s long list of things he should have done better.

“Lenny...he never said anything,” Lisa said, interrupting Barry’s thoughts. Her voice was brittle but she had a faint, fond smile on her face, “but I think he liked you too. He respected you, and he always got moody when I teased him about it. It meant so much that he trusted you enough to ask you for help when he had nothing to repay you with. My brother liked to be owed; he couldn’t stand to be the one owing.”

Everything she said should have been welcome, but with Len gone — and with Barry being responsible — it tore at him painfully.

“Is that...are you trying to hurt me?” he asked shakily, clenching his fists on his thighs in an attempt to stop his hands from trembling.

“Maybe a little,” she admitted. “But I’m telling the truth.”

When the tears came this time, Barry couldn’t stop them; there were too many to just wipe away and pretend they’d never been there. He gave himself a minute, then another, just to let it out, to wallow in how broken he felt, how much he hated what had happened — what he’d allowed to happen — and how much had been lost. When he was done and drying his eyes, he realized that Lisa had been crying quietly with him.

“I want my brother back,” she said resolutely after they’d each managed to pull themselves back together. “So tell me, what do you need to know?”

There was a thread of steel in her voice. Barry wondered how much of it was feigned, and how much was sheer willpower she pulled together from a desire to save her brother, but he didn’t ask. Instead, he did his best to mirror her focus; they couldn’t put the subject off anymore, and if they were going to get through it they both needed to be strong.

“Anything you can think of. How about we start with you telling me what happened, and I’ll ask questions where I need to?”

* * *

By the time Lisa had told him everything she could, Barry was shaking. He was walking a fine, rocky line between devastation and fury, and trying his hardest not to give in to either. None of the events of two nights previous had come as a surprise, not after everything he’d already managed to piece together from the crime scene and the M.E.’s report, but the way Lisa described it, and worse, the tremor in her voice as she spoke about her father, was gut-wrenching.

“I’m going to fix this,” Barry swore again, urgently, though doubts were starting to worm their way into his head. “No matter _what_ it takes.”

Lisa didn’t answer him, she just gave him a barely there nod. She was wrung out, drained. The things she had told him had taken an emotional toll, and she looked even worse than she had when he’d seen her comatose the day before.

“Joe West is the lead detective on your case,” Barry said as evenly as he could. “He’ll have to come in to take your official statement, but I’m going to talk to him first. So, if you don’t feel up to going through that again, you won’t have to. He’ll already have notes on everything, so he can just get you to confirm what he’s got, okay?”

“Alright.”

Her voice wasn’t exactly warm, but it was less accusing than it had been. She was undoubtedly exhausted, and misery was all over her face once more, but he thought maybe the knowledge that Barry would fight his hardest to undo it all was helping.

A few minutes of only mildly awkward silence later, there was a light knock on the door. Cisco was slipping inside before either of them could answer, and he held a large teddy bear in his hands.

“Since you couldn’t eat anything, I figured…” He propped it up on the wheeled table at the foot of the bed, facing Lisa. “Check it out; it has a gold ribbon around its neck.”

Lisa let out a tiny, almost inaudible laugh, but it was genuine and it made Cisco beam.

“I’m gonna get out of your hair,” Barry told them as he stood, mind a whirlwind of self-doubt and despair. He had to get out of that room, had to think. “Cisco, can you come to my place later today? I’ve got some...some things to work out. I’ll need your help.”

“I...yeah, okay. Lisa has some tests and stuff this afternoon that the doctors won’t let me in the room for anyway. Three-thirty okay?”

Barry nodded. “I’ll speak to you then.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting this now while my AC: Syndicate day one patch is loading, because I'm definitely not going to be posting anything over the weekend while I'm obsessively playing my PS4...

After he left the hospital, Barry made his way back to the precinct. For once he was moving at a normal speed; he needed the time to really think about what he was going to do.

He’d believed that there couldn’t have been anything worse than what he’d learned from the M.E.’s report the night before, but he’d been wrong. The things Lisa had told him left him second guessing himself — and worse, left him second guessing what he should do.

Barry had truly believed he could fix things; that he could go back and stop Lewis Snart, making everything okay. He wasn’t so sure anymore.

About halfway to the CCPD and around twenty minutes into his internal debate, Barry’s phone rang.

“Hey Joe,” he answered.

“How’d it go?”

“She couldn’t tell me anything about where her father had been staying, or where he might be now.” She’d told him plenty of other things — things Barry couldn’t bring himself to speak about over the phone — but nothing that could help them find their perp.

And Barry couldn’t help but wonder if the things she’d told him be a help or a hindrance, because for the moment all he could do was regret what he knew.

“Well, I’ve got better news. Those bugs you found got us something. They’re home-made, and my guy says they’re sophisticated enough that only a handful of people in Central City could have made them.”

Barry could hear the way Joe was grinning, and it made his jaw clench. It wasn’t fair for Joe to be happy, not when everything was— But Joe didn’t know everything, so Barry couldn’t even let himself get mad.

“And,” Joe continued, “only _one_ of those guys spent six years as Snart senior’s cellmate in Iron Heights. Benito ‘Eagle Eye’ Santini.”

“Santini? As in the Santini family? The crime syndicate that Len challenged?”

“That’s them. But here’s where it gets more interesting; Benny doesn’t just DIY his own surveillance equipment — he’s what the syndicate calls their _finder_. He’s an expert at tracking and watching people who don’t want to be found. He got out of Iron Heights eleven months ago, but he paid his old cellmate a visit just two weeks ago.”

“Making plans.”

“Exactly. My gut says Santini found the safe house and planted those cameras before Snart even got out of prison. Probably programmed or got his hands on a keycard for his buddy, too. If anyone can tell us where Lewis Snart is, or even just where he _was,_ my money’s on Santini. I’m gonna speak to him this afternoon, and with the right prodding I’m pretty sure he’ll flip on Snart.”

“That’s...that’s great.” It should have been excellent news. In fact, it _was_ excellent news, but all it did was open a pit of indecision and doubt in Barry’s gut. Once he had a location for Snart, he’d be expected to travel back. Joe, Cisco and Lisa would all be waiting for him to make a move as soon as he could, but Barry could no longer convince himself it was the best plan.

“You don’t sound like you mean that, Barr.” Joe’s voice was equal parts concerned and questioning. Barry could easily imagine the confused expression that would be all over Joe’s face.

“Sorry. It’s awesome news, really.” He tried to sound convincing, he really did, but judging by the dubious sound Joe made he didn’t do a very good job.

“Did you forget who you’re talking to or something? What’s wrong? Look, I know this is a terrible situation, Barr, but if we can find Snart’s hideout then you can fix it.”

“Yeah,” Barry agreed, but he couldn’t hide his uncertainty, and he knew the moment he spoke that Joe would hear it.

“Hey, what’s going on? Have you changed your mind?”

Barry couldn’t tell him. He _couldn’t_.

“No!” he answered quickly, trying to sound more certain than he actually felt. “I guess I just feel a bit overwhelmed from speaking to Lisa earlier. And I just...I didn’t think you were on board.”

“I wasn’t,” Joe admitted. “But after everything that we found out yesterday and last night...Barry, I understand why you have to do this. Don’t get me wrong, I still think it’s risky as hell, but I know you’ll be careful. Besides, if we can figure out enough today then...” Joe’s voice dropped to a whisper, “...you only need to run back forty-eight hours. How much can really go wrong?”

The phone was silent for a moment, then Joe added, “I did _not_ just say that. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go knock on my desk and hope it’s real wood.”

After Barry hung up, he switched directions and headed for home. He had some decisions to make, and he wasn’t sure he could make them alone.

* * *

Barry was in his bedroom, sitting on the floor with his back to his closet and his head in his hands when he heard the front door open and Iris call out his name.

“Up here,” he answered, voice rough.

“Hey,” she said as she came in, perching on the foot of his bed to face him. “What’s the emergency?”

When he looked up, the concern on Iris’ face deepened and he winced. He probably looked like a wreck. After he’d gotten off the phone with Joe, he’d held himself together only as long as it took him to get into his bedroom, send Iris a text begging her to come speak to him as soon as she could get away from work, and switch his phone to silent.

He glanced at the clock by his bed and he winced again. He’d spent the last forty-five minutes arguing with himself, wallowing in guilt and grief and just letting himself have a breakdown. Joe was probably wondering where he was, Caitlin was probably worried since he hadn’t really checked in with her all day, and Cisco was...well, Cisco was probably still at Lisa’s bedside.

“Barry?” Iris prodded.

“Yeah, sorry.” He scrubbed his hands over his face and through his hair quickly, even though he figured it was a lost cause. “It’s not really an emergency. I just...I need some advice.”

Iris gave him a worried look and slid off the bed to sit on the floor opposite him. “Okay. What kind of advice?”

He had no idea what to say. Barry hadn’t really thought much beyond ‘talk to Iris’, and he didn’t know how much to tell her. Would she support his decision? Would she think he was crazy?

Would she be mad that he didn’t do the same thing for Eddie that he was considering for Len?

Whatever expression was on his face, it was enough to make Iris lean forward and tell him softly, “Barry, whatever it is, you can talk to me.”

He nodded immediately, but it still took him a minute to gather enough courage to speak.

“If you could...if you could undo something. Something terrible. Would you?”

She stared at him searchingly, head tilted in thought. He was almost scared of what she might see in his eyes, and he had to look away. “I think that depends on the circumstances,” she told him. “You know, the first few days after Eddie died, I thought about that a lot. I...I wanted to ask you to go back. To save him. But then I realized it wasn’t fair of me to ask. And not just to you, but to Eddie. He made a decision to save us, and I couldn’t take that from him, even though I wish every single day that I could.” Her voice was getting thick, her eyes shiny with tears, and she reached across to twine her fingers with Barry’s. “So, in that case, no. I wouldn’t undo anything. But if things had happened differently...if it hadn’t been his choice and he’d been killed by Wells while we were still looking for him? If I had the power to change something like that, I’d do it in a heartbeat.”

_/* “...he kept warning me. Yelling, but not really yelling. It was so much like when we were kids. Every time I stopped looking he’d hurt Lenny even more. But when he started to...to r-r— I had to look away. I_ had _to,” Lisa told him, eyes wide and pleading, like she was begging for Barry — for_ anyone _— to understand, to forgive her. */_

“What if it’s even more complicated than that?” Barry asked, still unable to look Iris in the eye. He could feel himself trembling, and her hand tightened around his reassuringly.

“Barry, is this about Captain Cold?” His head snapped up, and she gave him a small, sad smile. “Dad told me about the case...and that you were blaming yourself.”

He let out a low, distressed chuckle and let his head fall back with a thud against his closet. He didn’t know how to answer, so he just stared at the ceiling until she spoke again.

“You have feelings for him, don’t you?”

“You sound just like Joe.” That wasn’t really an answer, but he was pretty sure she didn’t need one.

“Yeah, well, Dad can be a pretty smart guy.” She paused. “I’m not going to pretend that I understand what you see in him, but this isn’t about me. If you can fix things, I think you should.”

They were both silent for a long time before Barry could finally bring himself to speak again. When he did, his throat was dry and his voice was shaky. “What if I try and things go wrong? _Really_ wrong, I mean.”

“Look at me, Barry, and listen... _really_ listen, okay?”

Barry forced himself to do as Iris asked. She looked sad, but just as sincere and determined as he’d ever seen her.

“I have this friend,” she told him. “He’s been my best friend and practically my brother for most of my life. Even though sometimes he makes mistakes, he always does whatever he can to make things right.” She paused, searching his eyes. “Yes, sometimes bad things happen. He can’t always save everyone — _no one_ can do that — but somehow, he still manages to make things better than they could have been.”

“He sounds pretty cool,” Barry joked weakly, though he had to take a deep breath and swallow around the lump that was building in his throat.

_/* “When he caught me with my eyes closed, that’s when he started shooting Lenny with the cold gun.” Lisa’s sobs grew louder, more wracking, and Barry wished there was something, anything, he could do. But he could barely focus beyond the way her words were tearing at him, let alone find some way to make it easier on either of them. “Maybe if I hadn’t disobeyed…” */_

Iris squeezed his hand again. “Barry, I believe in you. Everyone who knows you believes in you. If you decide to change what happened, I know you’ll find a way to make things better. And if you can’t, then you’ll keep trying until you do. You’re a good man, Barry Allen.”

* * *

“So, what’s the plan?”

The words were familiar, but Cisco’s usual excitement was absent. Instead, he looked serious and determined.

“I’m not entirely sure yet,” Barry admitted uncomfortably.

“Okay, okay,” Cisco said with a quick nod, leaning forward on the sofa and rubbing his hands together anxiously. “That’s okay, we have a couple hours before Joe expects to have an address, right? It should be pretty simple for you to actually stop the guy. We just need to work out how fast you need to run to do a time jump of forty-eight hours. How fast do you think you were going when you accidentally did that one day jump?” He frowned. “Wait, what if you don’t need to run _faster_ , you just need to, like, _keep_ running until you go back twice as far?”

“Cisco, wait. Stop. I don’t...I don’t think I can do it.”

“What are you talking about? Of course you can. You’ve done it before.”

His tone was dismissive and casual, but Barry was pretty sure that Cisco had misinterpreted him deliberately; that he knew exactly what Barry was really trying to say. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Sure it is,” Cisco said firmly. “Because otherwise, you’d have said ‘I don’t think I _want_ to do it’. And then I’d have to punch you in the face,” his jaw tightened and his right hand curled into a fist that he immediately shook out, “even though I think we both know that’ll end worse for me than for you, so...how about we focus on putting together a plan, huh?”

Barry sighed, and sat on the couch beside Cisco. “It’s not that simple anymore.”

“Then we’ll _make_ it that simple.”

“It’s _not_ that I don’t want to fix things,” Barry told him. “But after everything Lisa told me, I just don’t think that running back a few days and stopping her father is really going to solve anything.”

Cisco glared at Barry. “No? Well you know what _I_ think it would solve? Emotional and physical trauma. A severe concussion. _Paraplegia_.”

_/* “He was rough with me, but he was so much worse with Lenny. He was_ always _so much worse with Lenny.” */_

“Cisco…” Barry’s hands were trembling and his heart was thudding faster and faster. He didn’t need to be reminded of all the things Lisa had suffered. Of all the things Len had suffered.

“How about the distress of losing the only person she really counted on?” Cisco added angrily. “Don’t you think it would solve _that_?”

“Don’t you talk about him!” Barry snapped loudly, suddenly furious. He couldn’t handle sitting still, so he shot out of his seat to pace in the tiny space between the couch and the coffee table. “Don’t you act like you give a damn about what happened to Len, when we both know if it weren’t for Lisa you wouldn’t care at all! You’re treating him like he’s an afterthought. You think _she_ suffered badly? You don’t...you don’t know _anything_.”

All the anger and rage and helplessness that Barry had been feeling since he first saw Len’s body was clawing its way to the surface and Barry couldn’t stop it, not even when he saw Cisco flinch in shock and back a few inches further into the couch, like he wanted some distance from where Barry was standing over him.

“You think I don’t know that this is my fault?” Barry demanded, voice growing even louder, hands tugging his own hair in frustration. “You think I’m not blaming myself for what happened _every. Single. Second?!_ ” he choked on his own words, remembering the disbelief and fear in Len’s eyes when Barry refused to help him. “You think that I don’t care about Lisa’s injuries, or that I want the last time I ever saw Len to be...to be…?”

Barry’s legs felt unsteady and his knees were ready to give out under him, so he dropped to a seat on the coffee table, his head in his hands and tears streaming down his face. All the anger he’d felt moments before was burned out, leaving just the overwhelming despair he’d been fighting desperately to keep locked away. “You don’t understand,” he forced out. “You _don’t_.”

“Then explain it to me.” Cisco didn’t sound mad anymore, just remorseful. When Barry looked up at him, Cisco’s eyes were red and wet, and his expression was miserable. “I’m sorry that I...that I tried to use what happened and how guilty you feel to manipulate you. Friends don’t do that,” he sniffed. “I’m just...what happened to Lisa was so terrible, and I care about her a lot. But that’s no excuse. And I know...I know you’re right, it _was_ worse for her brother. But...he’s not suffering anymore. She still is. And I hate seeing her suffer.”

“I get that.” Barry said unsteadily. He took several deep breaths, wiping the tears from his cheeks with his sleeve. “But the way their father hurt them...scared them...it wasn’t new. It started a long time ago. He convinced them that he would always come back, that no matter what they did, they couldn’t win against him.”

_/* “He’ll keep trying,” Lisa said in a quiet, trembling voice. “Even if you go back and undo this. He always said that no matter what, he’d keep teaching us until we learned. It’s been twenty years and he’s gotten worse, so I guess he was right about that.” */_

“To really make this better...Cisco, _that’s_ what I need to undo. That...that _certainty_ that they can’t stand against him. I need to go back further; back to before Lewis Snart went to prison. I know it sounds crazy, but I know in my gut that it’s the _only_ way. And I can’t do it without your help.”

Cisco frowned. "You're right. It does sound crazy." But before Barry could argue his case, a grin — a real _Cisco_ grin — spread across Cisco’s face. "I'm in."


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've almost finished writing the last chapter of this fic, and since I was writing the second last chapter when Family Of Rogues aired I wanted to let you guys know that I won't be changing or updating anything in line with what happened in that ep, with the exception of maybe tweaking Lewis' sentence structures to more closely match his canon speech patterns. Nothing else will be changed. 
> 
> Along that line, while I watched the episode I made a whole lot of terrifying inhuman noises because _holy crap_ so much of canon Lewis resonates with my Lewis. There are literally lines of dialogue in that ep which are strangely close to things I wrote, to the point where I was sending messages to two of my friends even though it was like 4 or a.m. their time. Oops.
> 
> And last but certainly not least, I don't respond to comments on here because I think it clogs the comment section up and misrepresents the number of comments for people who are sorting/searching by comment count, however I am grateful for all of them! Thank you to everyone who has commented or left kudos. :) I also want to leave a link here where [I addressed a comment left on the previous chapter](http://slythatheart.tumblr.com/post/131757421670/i-dont-reply-to-comments-on-ao3-because-i-hate), in case anyone is interested.

“Look man, I know I already said it, but I’m sorry about before. You were right, I didn’t understand.” Cisco looked subdued again, even as he hurried Barry through the halls at S.T.A.R. Labs.

“I’m sorry, too. I shouldn’t have snapped at you the way I did.”

Cisco shrugged. “It’s cool, I get it. I mean, I kind of wish I _didn’t_ get it, because honestly? Knowing everything that happened is _way_ worse than I thought it would be and now I totally get why Lisa didn’t want to say anything in front of me.”

“You did get kind of weepy when I told you,” Barry tried to joke, although it fell flat. Telling Cisco everything he knew had been necessary, but also incredibly painful. Neither of them had pulled through that conversation with much grace. “So now that I’ve told you everything—”

_Not everything_ , Barry thought to himself, but he had no idea how to broach the subject of his feelings for Len, so he just...didn’t _._

“—it’s your turn. Where are we going?”

“You mean, where we _are_ ,” Cisco corrected, unlocking and opening an unmarked door before gesturing for Barry to follow him inside.

When he stepped into the room and looked around, Barry briefly thought he’d walked into some nerd-centric episode of ‘Cribs’. The walls were covered in all kinds of posters, the shelves were overflowing with memorabilia, and every other flat surface was covered in bits and pieces of partially built (or partially dismantled) tech.

The whole room — from the bar fridge covered in dorky magnets, to the overstuffed couch, to the haphazardly strewn bean bags — screamed Cisco.

“What _is_ this place?”

“Okay, so after the employee count at S.T.A.R. Labs went from three digits to, well, three _employees_ , I repurposed one of the empty rooms. I come here when I really need to get into the deepest nerd zones of my mind.”

Barry shot Cisco a half smile. “It’s pretty sweet.”

“Shhhyeah it is. But,” Cisco grinned, “that’s not the reason we’re here. I mean, this _is_ where I get my genius level brain waves when I’m really struggling, but that’s not the point.”

“You’re a lot more upbeat now than you were earlier,” Barry commented. Even though the weight of guilt and responsibility was still settled heavily on Barry’s shoulders, seeing Cisco feeling positive once again was helping, at least a little.

“For good reason, dude. Because we’re totally going to put together one kick-ass plan and save the day. And I know _exactly_ where to start with said kick-ass plan.”

“And where is that?”

“Okay,” Cisco said, practically shoving Barry onto the couch as he started pacing. “Correct me if I’m wrong — which I’m not — but this whole idea of yours is crazy dangerous and we have no idea how to do it, right?”

“The particle accelerator—”

“Is a terrible, horrible idea. First of all, I know you remember what happened last time. Second of all, do you really think you can fix Lisa’s — _and Cold’s_ — extremely traumatic childhood in one minute and fifty-two seconds? _Really?_ Come on, man.” Cisco stopped his pacing to give Barry his most judgmental look. “And third of all, _I know you remember what happened last time._ ”

Barry huffed. He knew his plan wasn’t ideal, but at least it was something. “What other option do we have?”

“I don’t know, which is why we need to speak to someone who does.”

He groaned. “The only person we know with any serious hypotheses on time travel is Dr. Stein, and he doesn’t really know more than Wells already told us. Besides, what if he tells Joe?”

“Or Caitlin,” Cisco agreed. “But, also,” he made a loud buzzing sound, “you’re wrong. I mean, you’re not _wrong_ , wrong. He _’_ s the only _person_. But...not the only _thing_.”

“Cisco,” Barry started, leaning forward in his seat, “what did you do?”

“I uh...maybe, _possibly_ , stole Gideon from Wells’ things while we had him locked up. And _boy_ , are we lucky he didn’t try to use her because all I did to cover it up was seal her cosmetic outer casing around my old, broken Kindle and put that with his stuff. Pretty sure he would have noticed if he tried to activate her.”

“Cisco! Why didn’t you say anything?!”

“I kind of forgot,” Cisco answered with a shrug and a sheepish expression, “on account of the whole planet being threatened with destruction via epic black hole, and all. I only just remembered last night after you said — well, _implied_ — that you were going to go back.” He started rummaging through a drawer. “After I took her I stashed her here for safekeeping until Wells was gone. She should be right around…” Cisco held up a stainless steel case triumphantly. It was small, roughly the size of Barry’s wallet, but much slimmer. “...here! I put her in a smaller, more awesome looking casing. For, you know, pizazz.”

“This…” Barry pushed himself off the couch and moved closer to look at the device in Cisco’s hands. “Cisco, this is amazing! Wait...why does this say ‘Ava’ on the back?”

“Really, man? _Really_?” Cisco sighed. “Everyone I know needs to watch more movies. Never mind. The point is that we can ask her how to make this work. I mean, you ran back _by accident_ that one time. I know that was only one day and now we’re talking _decades,_ but you said yourself that you could see the Speed Force Super-Highway while you were running _before_ we released the hydrogen particle into the accelerator, right? That means you _must_ be able to reach it by yourself somehow.”

“You’ve been thinking about this a lot.”

“Dude,” Cisco stared at Barry as though he were missing something right in front of his face. “My best friend can travel through time. Of _course_ I’ve been thinking about this a lot.”

Barry could feel himself smiling a little, but it only lasted a few seconds until he thought back onto what Cisco had been saying.

“Okay, so yeah, maybe I can access the...the highway. But maybe I can’t travel back that far without the extra energy from the accelerator. Wells said—”

“Wells said a lot of things,” Cisco interrupted. “How do we know that creating that kind of unstable wormhole wasn’t just some part of his diabolical scheme? You have to admit, it was awfully convenient that you’d have just enough time to...to go back, but too little time to be able to stop him. Even though you totally stopped him anyway.” Cisco shrugged. “Look, all I’m saying is that there could be better ways that he kept secret from you, just so he could force you to work to his own agenda. We don’t know, but…”

“But Gideon might.”

“Bingo! Now, let’s take her back to the time vault.” Cisco glanced around the room and winced. “I don’t want the only AI I’ll probably ever meet to judge my housekeeping skills.”

“Good call.”

* * *

“Good evening, Barry Allen.”

“Uh, good evening Gideon.” Barry hesitated, not entirely sure what was acceptable procedure when asking a computer how to travel twenty-something years back in time — a computer with artificial intelligence that he would, apparently, one day build. After a moment, Cisco nudged him. “Right. Gideon, do you know anything about time travel?”

“I know many things about time travel, Barry Allen. Do you wish to ask a specific question, or would you prefer that I share all of the information I have on the subject?”

Cisco’s eyes were wide and curious. “How long would that take?”

“Approximately twelve days, five hours and thirty-seven minutes for simple recitation. However, that estimate may grow exponentially should you require deeper explanations on related subject matter or theorems. It also does not account for any time in which we must stop for various human needs, as these can vary greatly between individuals.”

“I’ll ask questions, then,” Barry hurried to clarify.

“Yeah,” Cisco agreed somewhat less enthusiastically. “But I’m gonna have to come back later, _for sure_.”

“What is your question, Barry Allen?”

He had so many that he hardly knew where to begin.

“Did you know about Dr. Wells’ plan to return to his time?” he asked after a few moments of internal debate. “The details, I mean.”

“I did.”

“He told me that I had to create a wormhole so that I could reach the past and he could travel to the future. He said that we had to use the particle accelerator.”

Gideon said nothing. Barry frowned for a moment, but she — or the hologram representation of her — just stood there silently.

“Oh.” _She doesn’t know I’m asking a question,_ Barry realized with a start. “Was he telling the truth?”

“Yes,” Gideon answered, and Barry’s heart sank. “In order for Dr. Wells’ plan to succeed, such a wormhole had to be created.”

Barry and Cisco looked over at each other. Cisco had the beginnings of a hopeful grin on his face.

“What do you mean, ‘in order for his plan to succeed’?”

Gideon tilted her head. “Dr. Wells could not return to the future without assistance. Upon traveling to the past in his attempt to kill you as a child, he was weakened beyond recovery. He required a viable avenue to be opened to him, as he could no longer open one himself.”

That sounded familiar, to an extent. Wells had told him essentially the same thing, but when Gideon said it, she made it sound like…

“What about me? Didn’t _I_ need to use the same wormhole to travel to the past?”

“No, Barry Allen. Your power is not weakened, simply under-utilized. You may access the Speed Force to travel at will; the wormhole Dr. Wells instructed you to create allows those without proper access to the Speed Force to harness its power.”

Cisco was staring at Barry with the same awed expression he’d had the first time that time travel had come up. “Dude.”

“Gideon, are you saying that if I wanted to I could just...run back twenty years right now?”

“Were you at optimum power, such a thing would be achievable. However as you are still learning and developing your abilities, it is unlikely that you will be able to travel large pockets of time without assistance.”

“So, I _do_ need to use the particle accelerator?”

“While the particle accelerator _can_ be utilized in such a way, the resulting wormhole is extremely unstable and I cannot recommend such a method.”

“Then what should he do instead?” Cisco asked curiously.

“The safest solution is for Barry Allen to wait until he has reached a higher level in his abilities. In the current timeline and with the statistics of his power development as Dr. Wells has input them, I estimate that Barry Allen will be ready to move ahead with the desired time leap in approximately twenty-eight months and eleven days.”

“That solution sucks. Try again,” Cisco huffed, and then turned to Barry. “I’m meant to be back at the hospital in less than two hours and I’m _not_ going to ask Lisa if she’s cool to wait another two and a half years.”

Barry nodded. He had no intention of waiting so long, either. “Is there another option, Gideon? One that I could do soon...like in the next day or so?”

“Of course.”

“Can you...uh...explain it to me? Please?”

“In order to access the Speed Force you must combine your speed, focus and energy. You must have experienced this in your previous jumps, Barry Allen. When you reach the height of your power in the future you will be capable of traveling centuries at will. However at your current speed and power capacity you will need to use an adequate power source to assist you, and you must initiate the jump in an area where the walls between this world and the Speed Force are weakened. Should you combine your abilities with such a place and energy source, you will be capable of travelling as far back as your memory will allow.”

Barry shot Cisco a questioning look, but Cisco just shrugged, looking as confused as Barry was.

“What do you mean as far back as my memory will allow? Wells said he traveled back over a hundred years.”

“At this stage in your development, Barry Allen, you must rely on your own personal experiences in order to land within your desired timeframe.”

“So, I have to remember something from when I was a kid, at the time I want to go back to?”

“That is correct.”

Barry was at a loss. He wanted to travel back twenty-one years. He wasn’t sure how many memories he had from when he was so young, let alone how accurate they’d be in relation to the time he needed to get back to.

“Go back to that other stuff for a minute,” Cisco tried to backtrack the conversation. “We can worry about memories and things later, the other stuff is a little trickier.”

Cisco was right, Barry could surely find an early enough memory, even if it was _too_ early and meant staying in the past for several months.

“Gideon, when you say an adequate power source, do you mean like the one Wells was using to power his wheelchair?” Cisco asked.

“Such a source would suffice.”

“Yesss!” Cisco punched the air in triumph. “So awesome!”

“You kept that, too?” Barry asked, although he already knew the answer. “Right. Never waste good tech.”

“Exactly! So now we just need to find a mystical gateway or whatever. Gideon, I don’t suppose you know of one? I have a wardrobe at home, is there one in there?”

“I do not understand the question.”

Barry shook his head with a small smile. With their plan slowly piecing together, it was getting easier to forget about how awful things were in the face of how much better he could make them. “What he means is, do you know a place where...where the walls between here and the uh, the Speed Force, are weak?”

“Of course.”

“Well, don’t keep us in suspense,” Cisco told her. “Where is it?”

“You are standing in it.”

Cisco’s eyes narrowed as he glared around the room. “I _knew_ this place had a funky vibe to it.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don’t know Barry’s birthday and the Arrow wikia just says he was born in 1989, so I’m just going with him being born early in the year. That makes him 26 for most of 2015, and I've gone with Len being 37 and Lisa being 30.

“Are you _sure_ that this is going to deal with how fast I’ll have to go?”

“I had to make a few tweaks at two o’clock this morning,” Cisco admitted, “but yes. Have a little faith, man. Just, uh...don’t hit Mach 3, that’s where my baby draws the line.”

Barry and Cisco were standing in the time vault, which was significantly more cramped since the treadmill had been placed inside it.

“How did you even get it _in_ here?” Barry asked, looking from the small doorway to the much larger machine. Then he shook his head. “No, forget that. How did you manage to get it past Caitlin without telling her what we were doing?”

Cisco shrugged and shot Barry a sheepish look. “I just left a note in its place that said ‘be back soon’.”

“Seriously? You better hope I can fix everything before she gets in.”

“To be fair, it _was_ four o’clock this morning when I moved it,” Cisco defended. After a moment he clapped his hands together. “Okay, so. I’ve got a little bag of goodies for you here. I had to go super streamlined so it won’t fit a _lot_ inside it, but at least you won’t be stuck in the past with just your Flash suit. If my design works — which _it should...hopefully_ — it won’t slow you down enough to be an issue, and since I re-purposed some scraps from your dearly departed suits one and two, it should hold up against your speed and any resistance just fine.”

“Wait, you kept the ruined suits as well? Cisco, do you have a hoarding problem?”

“Do you have _any_ idea how expensive it is to manufacture temperature resistant, reinforced tri-polymer?”

Barry grinned at Cisco and slipped the bag on. It was lighter than it looked and it fit snugly, almost like part of the suit. It went on like a zip up vest, rather than with straps, and it held almost no resemblance to a regular backpack. Barry bounced up and down on his toes for a moment and the bag stayed pressed along the curve of his back, barely shifting.

“Cisco, this is _awesome_.”

“It was Lisa’s idea.”

That dampened the positive, hopeful mood that had been buzzing between Barry and Cisco since they’d arrived at S.T.A.R. Labs. Barry wasn’t naive; he knew that Cisco was just as upset and worried underneath the surface as Barry still was, but they were both very aware that positivity and determination could make or break a situation.

It was challenging to stay upbeat when neither of them had slept the night before, but they’d been managing — running on an adrenaline and caffeine high. They both wanted the trip back to happen as soon as possible, so Barry had spent hours at the hospital with Lisa in the middle of the night, getting all the little details she could give him of the time he’d be jumping back to, while Cisco had been working on getting the tech ready.

“Anyway,” Cisco said, breaking the slightly strained silence that had fallen, “the notebook of info you and Lisa put together is already in the bag. You’ve also got that tech you asked for, plus one of the lab’s computer tablets, as many of those high-cal protein bars that could fit, five hundred dollars in bills from before 1994, a _creatively_ doctored version of your own CCPD ID just in case, and a change of clothes that shouldn’t stand out. Did you know that some thrift stores actually _pride_ themselves on having an ‘early nineties’ section? I learned _that_ fun and weird fact about an hour ago.”

“I did not know that, no,” Barry said with a grin.

“By the way, if anyone asks your name is actually Bart Andrews. At least, that’s what your ID says, but try not to make anyone suspicious because with even the _vaguest_ amount of digging your name will _not_ hold up. Not even Felicity can hack back through time, so…”

“Yeah, okay. And what about Gideon?”

Cisco sighed, eying Barry’s backpack with disappointment. “She’s in there, too. Just make sure you bring her back in one piece. There’s still _so much_ she hasn’t told me.”

“I’ll protect her for you,” Barry promised. “Besides, we’ll be back before you even notice we’re gone.”

“Cute. Now, be super careful with that power source,” Cisco said, “otherwise you’ll end up coming back the long way.”

Barry patted his chest reassuringly, right where Cisco had attached the power source to the inside of his suit.

“And when you want to come back—”

“Try to remember being in this room at this time instead of a specific event, so I don’t accidentally jump to an alternate timeline,” Barry recited for what felt like the tenth time that morning. “Even though Gideon was sure I wasn’t powerful enough for that yet.”

“Better safe than sorry.”

“Yeah, of course.”

It was kind of ironic; the entire plan was dangerous, without a doubt, and if anyone else found out they’d probably do anything they could to stop it, especially after what happened with the singularity. But even though the plan was dangerous, they were still playing it safe.

 _Maybe too safe_ , Barry thought.

Something must have shown on his face, because Cisco started shaking his head. “Nope. Nuh-uh. Stop it. I know what you’re thinking.”

“I’m not thinking anything,” Barry lied.

“If you weren’t wearing a flame retardant suit your pants would _so be_ _on fire_.” Cisco huffed. “I get it, okay? I do. Believe me, I wish you could undo all of it, too. If their dad never did anything to them, maybe they wouldn’t be on the wrong side of the law. That would be cool. And they wouldn’t have had to live through everything he did, which would be even better. But man, the more you change, the worse _everything_ could be. You gotta do just enough to make sure they aren’t so scared of him...and maybe make sure he’ll be in prison for longer. But you can’t do anything to change their futures completely.”

“I just hate that I’m knowingly letting them live through so much. It’s not right.”

“Maybe not,” Cisco acknowledged, “but you’re the one who brought it up in the first place. ‘Time will find a way to replace tragedy’ or whatever, right? Besides; you, Gideon and I already went through all of this.”

“Maybe we were wrong, maybe Wells was just—”

“Maybe Wells was _proof_. Look what happened; he tried to stop you becoming The Flash, and then he had to _make_ you The Flash. And I guarantee he figured that was a tragedy.”

“Yeah, but Wells also killed you, and when I undid that nothing as bad happened after.”

“Barry, I know you care, but let’s be real. I am _not_ that important.”

“Cisco—”

“No, man. I don’t mean that like I’m drowning in my own self-esteem issues or whatever. I mean that in the grand order of the universe, The Flash was obviously meant to be. And with every great hero, there’s a great villain, right? With Wells gone, that kind of leaves Captain Cold as your nemesis. That still needs to happen.”

“Maybe not. If he never became a criminal, he never would have gotten the cold gun and become Captain Cold,” Barry argued.

“Yeah, but I still would’ve made the gun. And how do we know that jerk of a janitor wouldn’t have sold it to someone even worse? Say, someone who didn’t stop killing people just because you asked nicely?”

Barry sighed. He was fighting a useless battle, and he knew it. Cisco was right and Barry was well aware of how careful he had to be. But he didn’t like it one bit. “I know, okay? I do. I just hate it.”

“Well yeah, me too. I don’t want Lisa to have gone through all that crap. The idea of a world where she’s not the bad guy, and she’s someone I could actually be with without having to fight an uphill battle would be awesome.” Cisco shrugged. “But then again, maybe in that world she and I would never have even met. Maybe that world’s Captain Cold killed me. Or you. Or _everyone_. Better the devil you know, especially when that devil has proven himself to be more like the Diet Coke of evil.”

“You know,” Barry said quietly, feeling guilty for even bringing it up, but knowing that he had to say it — both for Cisco, and to remind himself, “if this works, you and Lisa might not...I mean, she could be the same person she was after what happened at Ferris Air and you could be just as determined to stay away from her.”

“I know. But at least she wouldn’t be suffering like she is.”

 _That has to be enough_ , Barry told himself. _Len will be alive. And maybe there won’t be any feelings on Len’s side, maybe he can’t be trusted even if there is, but at least there’ll be time to find out._

“What if I mess this up?” Barry asked as he stepped onto the treadmill. He wasn’t going to change his mind, he had to see the plan through, but he’d be lying if he pretended he wasn’t scared.

“You can do this, Barry. I know you can.” Cisco’s expression was the picture of trust and sincerity, and exactly what Barry needed.

“Thanks, Cisco.”

Cisco stepped up onto the treadmill and gave Barry a long, tight hug. “You don’t need to thank me. Just...make sure they’re okay.”

With that, Cisco left the room. Once the entrance was sealed shut behind him, Barry took a deep breath, turned on the treadmill, and started to run.

* * *

Barry could see the Speed Force, could see colors and lights flashing past him. Reaching it had been easier than last time, which supported Gideon’s claim that traveling would become simpler as Barry strengthened his abilities.

Images, flashes, snippets of time began to appear just as they had before, except this time they were clearer and each lasted longer. He did his best to ignore them, to focus on his fifth birthday. It had been in early 1994, and based on what Lisa had told him, was roughly a month before her father’s abuse had gone from bad to...to worse.

_/* “That part of it...it started a few months before Dad got busted, right after Lenny’s birthday. Lenny was too scared to admit it to the cops,” she said sadly. “He thought they’d say he deserved it, and that they’d drop the rest of the case, too.”_

“ _Why would they do that? You were kids being abused!”_

“ _Because...because he never did it to me, only to Lenny. Dad always said Lenny brought it on himself. Called it ‘corrective therapy’, and Lenny was scared the cops would agree.”_

“ _Your father was wrong.” Barry’s stomach twisted. He couldn’t imagine what it had felt like for a scared, young Len to live in fear of his monster father; what it was like for Lisa to be forced to watch her brother be abused so badly. */_

Barry pushed the memory from his mind, and focused once again on where he needed to go. He had to run faster, because although he could see the Speed Force around him, he wasn’t really moving through it yet.

He gritted his teeth and pushed himself to run faster.

 

_!!! FLASH !!!_

_Barry, Oliver and Firestorm are outside S.T.A.R. Labs, fighting Dr. Wells._

 

_!!! FLASH !!!_

_Lisa is standing with an amazed look on her face. Cisco is beside her, beaming as she practices walking with her lower body surrounded by a golden exoskeleton._

 

_!!! FLASH !!!_

_Barry is sitting beside Joe with a glum expression, listening to his teacher telling Joe that Barry disappeared from school and that Iris covered for him._

 

_!!! FLASH !!!_

_Joe is holding Lewis Snart at gunpoint. The moment Snart steps forward, a furious looking Barry takes the excuse to hit him with extreme speed. Snart does not get up._

 

_!!! FLASH !!!_

_Cisco is shouting at Barry, accusing him of not wanting to help, of not caring that he can undo what happened to Lisa._

 

_!!! FLASH !!!_

_Len is facing Barry in the warehouse, expression arrogant but eyes pleading, asking Barry to stop his father._

 

_!!! FLASH !!!_

_Barry and Eddie are laughing over a pizza, Iris beaming at them._

 

_!!! FLASH !!!_

_Barry is kneeling over Len’s lifeless body, trying desperately not to break down as he tells Joe what he can about the crime scene._

 

_!!! FLASH !!!_

_A drunken Caitlin is encouraging Barry to join her on the karaoke stage._

 

_!!! FLASH !!!_

_A young Barry is beaming at the five candles on his cake, as his mother laughs, hugging him from behind and his father holds their camera ready to take a photo._

 

With a jolt, Barry was thrown from the Speed Force. He looked around quickly, recognizing his childhood clubhouse. It was miles too small for him as an adult, but he huddled in the tiny space, listening to children outside laughing.

He cracked the door open just a little and glanced outside.

It was exactly like he remembered. His father was laughing, trying to direct the chaos. There were over a dozen excited children around the table, eagerly awaiting some cake. Barry was sitting behind the cake, ready to blow out the candles, while his mother leaned behind him, holding him in a warm hug.

Barry gave himself a moment to just watch the scene; to remember how happy he’d been, how loved he’d felt with both parents celebrating him, and how grateful he was to still have those memories.

He waited just long enough to see his mom and dad send each other a loving look and for his dad to take the photo. Then he sped across town, the displaced air behind him blowing out the candles on his younger self’s cake.

* * *

Once Barry had found somewhere to stay and was dressed in a more discreet outfit — one that smelled vaguely of mothballs — he headed for the place that Lisa swore she would be found when she wasn’t at school or at home.

_/* “Dad was really supportive of my figure skating. He bought me pretty clothes for competitions, bragged about me and how I was gonna be a star. He made a big deal about it to other people, acted like he cared. Even after everything came out, people kept saying that he’d seemed like such a good father.” Lisa’s face contorted in disgust. “He was good at pretending around others, you know?” */_

He found her, even smaller than he’d expected, on the ice at the local rink. She was so graceful that it was difficult to believe she was only nine years old, and that her home life was secretly so troubled.

_/* “He told me that I was lucky to be talented on the ice, because without that I’d be nothing. He said that it’d keep me out of trouble and that I’d be famous one day. I think that’s why he was more careful with me, I was his meal ticket. And anyway, he knew saying I’d fallen at the ice rink made a great excuse for when he did get too mad and hurt me too badly to keep it hidden.” */_

Feeling guilty for invading a child’s privacy, but knowing it had to be done, Barry found her bag and searched it at super speed.

Nothing. At least, not what he was looking for. Her bag contained a packet of chips, bottled water and a first aid kit that no child her age should have enough experience to use, but none of that was proof of anything.

He sighed in disappointment, but he wasn’t about to let himself get discouraged. He had plenty more places to find the evidence he was looking for.

_/* “I almost quit skating so many times once Lenny explained to me how Dad was using it against me, but I just couldn’t. Skating meant so much to me. When I was on the ice, I didn’t have to be scared. It was the only freedom I had back then.” */_

* * *

Of course, Barry had known that Len would be alive. It was 1994, and Barry knew exactly how long Len had lived in the original timeline — not nearly long enough, but more than twenty-one years past the day he was currently experiencing. And yet, seeing him still jarred something loose in Barry, something that had been gripping his chest tightly and painfully since he’d been faced with the loss of Len a few days previous.

 _He was never yours to lose,_ Barry reminded himself. How could it count as losing him when Barry never even really had him in the first place? He didn’t know, but it certainly felt like it did.

How had he spent over forty-eight hours unable to breathe without even realizing it? And how could just seeing Len alive slam the air back into Barry’s lungs so viciously?

After having checked Len’s grandfather’s home, the local library, and a few other places on Lisa’s list, Barry tried the Motorcar, a diner across from the CCPD. Somehow Barry felt both relieved and shattered when he spotted Len — younger, of course and no where near as closed off as Barry knew he would become, but still undeniably _Len —_ sitting with a much older man that Barry could only assume was his grandfather. He was grinning over his burger, and Barry couldn’t help but wonder how differently things would have turned out if his grandfather lived for longer than just a few more months; if the man had still been around when Lewis Snart went to prison.

But that wasn’t the case, and there was nothing that Barry could do to change that.

At that moment Len looked up, right at the window Barry was watching him through, and narrowed his eyes suspiciously. Barry darted out of sight quickly.

_/* “Whatever you do, make sure Cold doesn’t see you.”_

“ _Why not? It’s not like he’ll recognize me.” */_

Barry’s heart was pounding harder than it had any right to, but that was often the case where Len was concerned. He peered carefully around the window frame once again, but Len was nowhere to be seen.

“Is there a reason you’re watching me and my Gramps?” came a voice from behind him, startling Barry. He spun around fast — almost _too_ fast, but he managed to rein in his powers just in time to look surprised but not _super_.

“Uh, what? No. I’m not...I’m not watching anyone,” Barry offered lamely. He was completely unprepared for something like this — the plan had been to avoid Len at all costs.

 _/* “He won’t recognize you in the past. But he might_ in the present _,” Cisco told him seriously. “What if he remembers you the first time he sees your face after he goes up against The Flash? We don’t know how much that could change.”_

_Barry shook his head. “It’s over twenty years, Cisco. Even if he somehow remembers meeting me, he’ll just assume he was imagining it, or maybe that he met someone who looked a little like me.” */_

Len’s eyes were locked onto Barry’s and it hurt to see him so much like the man he would be, but so different at the same time. His face was twenty years younger but his eyes had hardly changed, were just as intelligent and focused as ever.

“Right. Well, whoever you’re _not_ watching...try not watching them more convincingly. You’re being creepy.” He hadn’t managed to perfect that icy calm that Barry was so used to, and the open mix of distrust and curiosity on his face made something twist strangely in Barry’s stomach. It was familiar and foreign all at once.

Without giving Barry a chance to reply, Len turned to leave. Barry didn’t stop him, wanted to but absolutely couldn’t. He couldn’t do anything more to stand out in Len’s memory than he’d already unwittingly done.

 _/* “It’s not worth the potential problems, man. It’s_ insanely _rare so he probably hasn’t been tested, but I think Cold might have an eidetic memory. Or he’s at_ least _got a way better memory than anyone should. What if in our time he remembers seeing you around him as a kid, possibly looking kind of stalkerish or whatever. I’m just saying...probably shouldn’t risk it.” */_

After a few moments Barry sped all the way around the back of the restaurant to peek in from the other side of the front window, where Len would hopefully not be keeping an eye out for him. His eyes landed right on Len who was looking — no, _glaring_ — through the window and across the street.

His expression was so different to just moments earlier, so full of anger and hatred, that Barry knew what Len was looking at, even before Barry followed his line of sight to take a look for himself.

Lewis Snart, easily recognizable from the mugshot in his original arrest report, was standing with a few other officers and laughing. Seeing that man — that _monster_ — alive and well and out on the streets sent a shock of fury down Barry’s spine. Lewis Snart was a vicious abuser, someone who traumatized his children and then went about the rest of his day smiling and joking around without a care in the world. And just to add an extra layer of insult, he had the nerve to wear a CCPD uniform, as if he had any respect for the law; for the CCPD’s mission statement of _truth, liberty, justice_ ; for what was right.

Barry could end all of it, right in that moment. He could run fast enough to flatten Snart, could slam into him with the force of a freight train and leave him as nothing but a bloody smear. Or he could make it slower, get up close and personal; take a page from Dr. Wells’ book and phase his hand through Snart’s chest then wrap it around his heart.

His hand was already starting to vibrate at the thought.

 _No_.

It didn’t matter how tempting it was, or how badly Barry wanted to hurt Snart the way that monster had hurt Len and Lisa.

And it certainly didn’t matter how desperately Barry wanted to pull the man’s heart from his chest and show it to him before he died, how poetic and justified it would be to repay the feeling that Barry had suffered when he saw Len’s mangled body.

I didn’t matter, because he couldn’t do any of it.

A change like that would almost be guaranteed to throw the future too far out of alignment. He could almost hear Cisco telling him not to be an idiot; shivered as he suddenly recalled the way rage had consumed him when Bivolo infected him, how badly he regretted giving into it.

 _And_ , Barry had to remind himself forcefully, _you don’t kill people, not intentionally._

So Barry did the only thing he could do to stop himself from giving into temptation.

He ran.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bumble and Destroyer are two robot bees that Cisco kept and repurposed. They’re mentioned in a post on the [official Cisco tumblr](http://chroniclesofcisco.tumblr.com/post/116947183680/bug-eyed-bandit).
> 
> Nimbus flattened Destroyer, but for the purposes of this fic, Cisco totally managed to rebuild him as Destroyer II.
> 
> Also, yes, the satellite Gideon mentions exists and is still currently active.

It hadn’t been difficult to find a cheap room at a motel that took cash and asked no questions. It had been a little harder to find one with decent (and working) locks and a VCR with a recording feature that actually recorded, but that had been the first thing Barry had done after rushing from his childhood home and changing his clothes.

It wasn’t as if he needed anything long term; he only planned on being around for a couple of nights at the most, and he was more than able to take care of himself. He only needed a place to sleep, and somewhere that he could activate Gideon without being seen.

Which was the reason why, after he’d seen Len at Motorcar, he’d headed straight back to his motel room.

“Gideon, can you connect to Bumble and Destroyer II?” Barry still thought those names were a little ridiculous, but Cisco had been insistent, claiming they were his teensy robotic insect babies and therefore deserved to be called by name.

“Yes, Barry Allen. The satellite through which Cisco Ramon routed my connection to them was launched in 1993 and is therefore currently active. The connection is stable.”

“Great. I left them in an alley opposite the downtown CCPD precinct; can you please upload some instructions to them? I’ve got two targets they need to find and follow. They should still be in range. They’ll need to keep out of sight, but stay close enough to get constant footage unless there’s an immediate risk of being noticed. I want twenty-four hour visual and audio recordings if it’s possible.”

“Instructions are primed and ready to send. Please name your targets.”

“Assign Bumble to Leonard Snart and Destroyer to Lewis Snart.”

“Of course,” Gideon replied. “I will send your instructions immediately, including images of each target for facial recognition.”

“Thanks, Gideon. And remember, I don’t want them to do anything except find and follow. Destroyer has stinging capabilities; make sure it doesn’t use them.”

“As you wish, Barry Allen.”

If he had the time, Barry would sit in that room and just...watch. He didn’t want to miss anything important, but he had things he needed to do, evidence he needed to find.

“Gideon, can you just...I don’t know. Can you keep an eye on this? And let me know if anything happens that’s related to Lewis Snart abusing his kids? Or just...if there are any conversations that might be tied to that?”

“Do you have specific parameters for your request?”

“No, but I trust your judgement. I guess anything you think will provide information or insight. But if we’re outside this room, please be subtle when you alert me, okay? Just beep or something. No one else can see you; it would cause too much trouble.”

“Very well. I am happy to assist.”

* * *

Since Barry knew nobody was home, it was the perfect time to follow through with the next part of his plan. With a small bag of tech, a couple of disposable cameras, and Gideon tucked into his backpack — still active, but her UI hidden — he sped to the Snart house.

He didn’t know how to pick locks, nor did he know what phasing through a wall might do to Gideon, but he did find a window with a lock old enough to unlatch when he vibrated the frame just right.

“Bingo,” he whispered to himself.

Once he was inside, he took a moment to look around. It all seemed so...so _normal_. The place was neat and welcoming, and although Barry hadn’t really expected to find obvious evidence right out in the open, he still felt unsettled.

If he hadn’t already known what went on in that house, he wouldn’t have guessed. No wonder Snart had gotten away with hurting his kids for years.

Barry shook off his discomfort, searching the home and planting the miniature security cameras and microphones Cisco had packed for him. He would have Gideon activate them once he’d left. It went against every instinct he had to just...just _let_ things happen, but if he was going to build a proper case, photo and video evidence would go a long, long way. It was something that had been lacking the first time around, and although Snart had been sent away for a long time, it wasn’t nearly long enough. Barry was going to change that.

He knew that if things got too bad he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from interfering, but the sexual assault wouldn’t start for a month or so and, according to Lisa, everything else was practically normal to them at that point.

The very idea of it turned Barry’s stomach.

When he had just one camera left he straightened his shoulders, took a deep, steadying breath, and unlocked what would have been — if not for Barry’s prior knowledge — an unobtrusive door in the master bedroom.

_/* “He called it ‘Time Out’. It was a long time before I knew it wasn’t the same thing other kids had. He said it was to teach me to be more independent. Less clingy,” Lisa sniffed. “But really, he just wanted to torture me for needing Lenny more than I needed him.” */_

The little room was visibly soundproofed, with thick foam attached to the walls. The light fixture had been removed and there was nothing inside the room save for a thin pillow, an old blanket, and a bucket.

_/* “He knew...Dad knew I was terrified of being alone. Of b-being in the dark. I had nightmares of Lenny leaving me like Mom did, and Dad used that...made me watch him hurt Lenny, and then locked me in that room for hours. S-s-sometimes days if I didn’t have school or practice. */_

Barry fought down the sick feeling in his stomach, focusing on the plan as he took several photos with one of the disposable cameras. He was tempted to leave something soothing for Lisa under the blankets; a flashlight, some candy, a teddy bear. _Anything_. But he knew her father would react badly if he found anything in there, that he’d undoubtedly take it out on Len or Lisa, so he resisted the urge.

_/* Dad’d tell me I had to think about what a bad sister I was, how much Lenny would hate me if I kept getting him punished. One time Lenny tried to sneak me out. Dad...h-h-he...” she cut herself off, staring at the wall angrily until she was breathing normally again. “Lenny never tried that again, but I always knew he wanted to.” */_

After planting the final camera, the only one with thermographic capabilities, Barry raced out before he could decide to stay and lock Snart in there to rot instead.

While he was running, he tried his best not to compare Lisa’s punishment room to the prisoner cells within the pipeline, tried not to consider the parallels between their methods of holding metahumans and Lewis Snart’s abusive behavior. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t quite push the thoughts away.

_No wonder Len and Lisa helped the metas escape._

* * *

“Good afternoon, Barry Allen.”

Barry swallowed the mouthful of protein bar he’d been chewing. “Hi Gideon. Do you have something?”

“Possibly. Lewis Snart is currently speaking to a co-worker regarding the wellbeing of his children.”

“Can you show me?”

“Certainly.”

A projection appeared on the dirty but empty section of wall beside the bathroom door. It showed Lewis Snart drinking a cup of coffee, facing another uniformed officer that Barry didn’t recognize.

“...a little angel. My girl is gifted. She’s gonna be famous one day. In the Winter Olympics.”

“That’s great, man,” the other officer said. “I can’t even get my kid to get up for school without complaining. I can’t imagine her spending hours everyday practice _anything_. She doesn’t give a damn about her future yet. Probably won’t until they come up with some career that involves collecting posters of that Fresh Prince kid, or watching clip after clip of that new age R’n’B crap that all her friends are listening to. Whatever _happened_ to music, huh?”

“Don’t ask me, Tommy,” Snart scoffed. “There’s none of that in my house. The only music I ever hear Lisa listen to is classical. She can’t really do any tricks or spins or the fancy footwork that she likes to do when she’s skating with anything but the old fancy stuff. Beethoven, Mozart, you know.”

Tommy snorted. “Well, that probably ain’t much better than what I gotta put up with.”

“Probably not. But it’s a small price to pay for my kid’s bright future, isn’t it?”

Barry seethed. Listening to Snart talk about Lisa like he cared about her — like he thought of her as more than just his golden ticket, when Barry knew better — made his skin crawl.

“What about that boy of yours?” Tommy asked. “Haven’t heard any talk from the other cops ‘bout him getting into any trouble lately. He finally keeping his nose clean?”

“Ah, he wouldn’t know the meaning of the word. He came home yesterday all banged up again, and I won’t be surprised if I find him even worse tonight. Sometimes I think he does it just to make me crazy.”

“That’s rough, man.” Tommy said. “But I guess you can’t have _two_ perfect kids; wouldn’t be fair to the rest of us.”

“Don’t get me wrong, I love my son. But he lies, he steals, he starts fights and comes home covered in bruises but won’t tell me what happened — he just says it’s all my fault and that he hates me. You know, I do everything I can to help him, but he doesn’t listen to a word that comes out of my mouth.”

“I know, man. We’ve all seen it. You’ve got the patience of a saint.”

“Ah, I don’t know about that. But it’s my job as a father, to keep trying to teach him until he learns.”

“Well I probably woulda given up by now. Like I said; patience of a saint.”

Snart raised his mug to his mouth to take a sip of his coffee. Destroyer’s cam captured the twisted smirk he was hiding behind the mug, but Tommy missed it completely. “To be honest,” Snart added, “I thought about sending him to stay with my Dad for a while, you know, give him a little space to get his head on straight. But the old man doesn’t want him. Besides, I’m not a quitter.”

Barry closed his eyes and counted to three, slowly. He’d already seen Len with his grandfather, knew if they had the chance, Len and Lisa would cut their father out of their lives and their grandfather would be happy to have them.

“You could try sending him to military school. Might pull him back into line.”

“We’re on the same salary. Could _you_ afford military school?”

That was bullshit, Barry knew. He’d seen Snart’s file and heard plenty from Lisa. The man wasn’t just an abusive father; he was also one of the more crooked cops to tarnish the CCPD badge. After his arrest, a lot of dodgy deals came to the surface, along with several bank accounts containing money that definitely didn’t come from Snart’s day job.

Tommy snorted. “With the lack of overtime lately I couldn’t afford military _camp_ , let alone full time school.”

“Besides, Lisa _loves_ her big brother. Worships the ground he walks on, God knows why. If my son doesn’t fix that attitude of his, he’s gonna crap all over his future and drag her down with him.” Snart paused for a moment, his face covered in indecisiveness, like he wasn’t sure whether to continue. Barry didn’t buy it for a second. “Sometimes I think it’s already started.”

“What d’you mean?”

Snart shook his head. “Ah, it’s probably nothing.”

“Maybe, maybe not. What’s going on?” Tommy prodded.

“Lisa has a couple of bruises. No big deal, sometimes she hurts herself trying something a little too tricky on the ice. But...she tried to keep them a secret.”

Tommy’s shoulders squared and looked at Snart worriedly. “You think her brother’s hurting her?”

If Barry were in the room, he’d punch Lewis Snart right in his fake-concerned frown. In fact, he was tempted to race down there and do it anyway.

“Nah,” Snart said eventually. His voice was laced just a little too heavily with uncertainty, but Tommy seemed to fall for it hook, line and sinker.

“Lou, if you think that troublemaker of yours is hurting Lisa—”

Snart shook his head. “Look, forget I said anything. That kid makes a lot of stupid decisions, but he loves his sister. I just worry that maybe the trouble _he_ finds could end up finding her.”

“Turn it off, Gideon,” Barry bit out angrily. He was moments away from dropping the whole plan and just leaving Snart in the middle of the ocean to drown.

“Have I angered you, Barry Allen?” Gideon asked as the projection disappeared.

“No, not you. Him.”

Gideon nodded. “I see. You are frustrated by Lewis Snart’s actions.”

“He’s lying so blatantly, turning everything around to make himself seem like this _amazing_ father with some...some lost cause for a son and they just _believe_ him.”

“Lewis Snart is an adept manipulator, and a passable strategist. It would seem from your own timeline that he has also passed these traits to Leonard Snart.”

“Len and his father are _nothing_ alike!” Barry snapped.

“They share some similarities, as is common between parent and progeny, however as is often the case, Leonard Snart has far surpassed his father in skill,” Gideon stated and then she tilted her head to the side. “ _Now_ I have angered you.”

“Yes!”

“I apologize, Barry Allen, though I do not understand why a simple statement of fact should invoke such ire.”

Barry shook his head, at the same time hoping to shake off how frustrated he felt.

“I have a lot to do,” he said after a few moments of slow, deliberate breathing. “Just...please let me know if anything else comes up.”

“Of course.”

* * *

_/* “I usually kept mine with my skating gear, or taped under the bottom of a drawer in my dresser. Sometimes in my locker at school.”_

_“And you wrote everything in these books? Everything he did?”_

_Lisa nodded gingerly. “We started a couple of months after...after the first time he really hurt Lenny. Broke his arm. The books were Lenny’s idea. He used to watch cop shows when we were kids. He said it was always evidence that sent people to prison, so we needed evidence. Just in case. But it didn’t matter in the end, we couldn’t hand them in.”_

_“Why not?”_

_“Because...because we wrote it_ all _down. Everything, even when Dad started… the rest of it. The stuff Lenny was too scared to tell the cops. So we buried them when the investigation started. But if you can get hold of them, they should help.” */_

Barry sat on the uncomfortable, squeaky mattress in his motel room, four books in front of him. They were innocuous; everyday composition notebooks, the kind with faint blue lines that most kids used in school.

The first was rumpled, dog-eared and about ninety percent full with a childish mix of print and cursive. The other three were pristine, the writing in them neat and precise. Each had a date range in the front cover, with every entry similarly dated. Two of them were filled cover to cover, the final book nearly halfway used.

He’d found Lisa’s book in her locker, but Len’s books had been a little more elusive. Barry had finally found them tucked in a shoebox, hidden behind several other boxes on the top shelf of the spare room closet in Len’s grandfather’s house.

Barry’s hands shook as he began to read.

* * *

“Barry Allen, Leonard Snart is speaking of his father and of the abuse specifically.”

“Can you please show me?”

A video of Len and Lisa was immediately projected on the wall. Len was on one knee in front of his sister.

“...you don’t need to worry about me, okay? I’m your big brother. I’m the one who takes care of you, not the other way around. I’m always going to—”

“Gideon,” Barry interrupted, “can we go back?”

“How far would you like me to reverse?”

“Until just before Lisa appears, I think.”

The projection disappeared, only to reappear a few seconds later. On it, Len was sitting on a rail by the entrance to the ice rink, tapping his fingers rhythmically as he waited.

When Lisa came out of the rink she spotted her brother immediately and beamed at him.

“Lenny, you should come in next time!” she chastised. The way she said it, and the way Len rolled his eyes, told Barry it was a regular argument.

“And get roped into practicing throw jumps and pair spins with you? No thanks.”

“But the rink is a great place to meet boys,” Lisa teased.

Len slid off the rail quickly, his face serious. “Don’t you ever let anyone hear you talking like that,” he warned.

“Duh, Lenny,” she replied with a pout. “I’m not stupid. I’d never tattle on you.”

Len grabbed Lisa’s bag from her and hefted it over his shoulder as they started walking. “It’s not just for me, sis. You know if Dad thinks you come here for anything other than practice he’ll flip. We don’t need more of what happened last night.”

Lisa’s face fell ever more, from a childish pout to something more real. “I know. Anyway, boys are gross,” she said quietly. “I was just joking.”

“Dad doesn’t have a sense of humor,” he told her. He stopped and turned to face Lisa, kneeling in front of her. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m okay.”

“Tell the truth,” he insisted. “Does this hurt?” He pressed carefully at her side, a little below her ribs, and she winced.

“Yes. But it’s way better since you put that ice on last night. And the bandages didn’t unwrap at all, not even when I was spinning. You’re getting real good Lenny.” Her face brightened. “Hey! Maybe you could be a doctor!”

“We can’t all be doctors, Lees. You have to finish school, and college, and even more school after that. It takes a lot more money than I have.”

“Even when you work with Grampa?”

“Yeah,” Len said with a nod. “Even then.”

“Oh.” Her face fell again, and Len sighed.

“Hey, did it hurt a lot while you were practicing?”

Lisa shook her head. “No, only when I banged it. But I was super careful, like you said.” Her expression shifted to guilty and she bit her lip, toeing the ground and struggling to meet Len’s eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“It was my fault he hurt you so bad last night. Because I was late. You didn’t even _do_ anything this time.”

“Look at me, I’m feeling great.”

“Liar!” Lisa said, poking her finger hard into her brother’s chest. Len made a sharp noise of pain that he quickly cut off, and Lisa took a step back with a trembling bottom lip and wide, wet eyes. “I’m sorry Lenny,” she sobbed. “I didn’t mean to make it hurt again.”

Len reached out, tugging on his sister’s hand and pulling her close again. “I promise I’ll be fine. It’s okay.”

“No,” she cried, stamping her foot. “He hurts you worse. He always hurts you worse, even when it’s my fault. It’s not okay. It’s not fair.”

“Life isn’t fair, sis,” Len told her, stroking her hair until her sobs turned into tiny hiccups. “I’m bigger than you, okay? I can take it. Any time he’s mad at you, any time he wants to hurt you, I’d rather that he hurts me instead. Do you understand?”

Lisa nodded, tears still streaming down her face. “But what if he really hurts you bad one day, Lenny?”

“If you think he’s going to hurt you too, and I’m hurt so much that I can’t stop him, Lisa you need to run as far away as you can and hide. Don’t stick around for me, because you don’t need to worry about me, okay? I’m your big brother. I’m the one who takes care of you, not the other way around. I’m always going to take care of you.” He waited until he received one last, tentative nod from Lisa, then Len stood up and gestured for her to walk with him.

“I’m gonna try real hard to be good, okay Lenny? So he can’t punish you because of me anymore.”

_/* Dad always said that I should remember where I came from, who raised me. As if Lenny didn’t do all of that. He wanted to turn us against each other, so we’d need him more, but it never, ever worked. Lenny never left until he had to, until he knew I’d be okay.” */_

“Okay Lees.” Len’s face was so much easier to read as a teenager, and the doubt across it was clear to Barry. Len glanced down at Lisa with fondness and worry, and Barry knew exactly what he was thinking.

A monster like Lewis Snart didn’t need a reason. If his kids didn’t give him one, he’d come up with something just because he could.

“By the way,” Len added, pulling a small paper bag from his jacket pocket. “I’ve got something for you.”

Lisa stopped walking and bounced on her toes. “Is that my favorite?”

“I don’t know,” he smirked. “Is your favorite the double choc chip cookie from Motorcar?”

Lisa put her hands on her hips. “You _know_ it is, Lenny!”

“Then I guess it’s your favorite.” He held it out to her, then snatched it back out of reach before she could take it from him. “Quid pro quo.”

“I _hate_ it when you say that,” Lisa whined. “I don’t even know what it _means_.”

“Sure you do,” Len told her. “It means if you want the cookie, you’re going to clean my room for it.”

She huffed dramatically. “Your room _is_ clean, Lenny. It’s _always_ clean. It’s cleaner than mine!”

Len’s grin widened, like that admission had been exactly what he was waiting for. “Well, I guess it means you’re going to clean _your_ room, then.”

“Jerk,” Lisa said, folding her arms across her chest, but when Len gently pulled her to his side in a one-armed hug, she went happily, trying to hide a smile against the fabric of his jacket.

“Brat.”

The projection paused.

“There has been no further mention of their father or their home life,” Gideon announced. “Do you wish for me to continue playing the footage, Barry Allen?”

“No thank you, Gideon,” Barry replied, voice rough. “But please keep an eye on them.”


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a new tag here (brief Leonard Snart/OMC) but it's nothing to get concerned over.
> 
> Also, Bluetooth should work even though it wasn’t commercially available yet, because according to my research it runs on radio frequencies, so as long as they have a working sender and receiver, it’s usable.

By the time it was getting dark Barry had a current map of Central City and its surrounding districts on the bed, several locations marked out on it. Just as he was re-folding it to fit in his backpack, Gideon appeared.

“Lewis Snart appears to be heading in the direction of his home. Would you like me to display current footage, Barry Allen?”

Every part of Barry wanted to say yes, but he knew exactly what would happen if he did. He’d be far too tempted to interfere at the slightest hint of abuse, possibly even at the first unkind word. That would ruin everything.

“No thank you, Gideon,” he answered, trying to settle his quickening pulse by speaking as calmly as he could manage. “But please let me know if anything serious happens.”

“The term ‘serious’ is somewhat ambiguous. Please define more specific guidelines.”

Barry wasn’t sure where to draw that line. He wanted to say ‘anything physical’, but he knew that was almost guaranteed. He clenched his jaw, and forced himself to answer, “Anything bad enough that one of them needs a hospital visit.”

“Very well.”

At that, Gideon’s UI disappeared from view. Barry tucked her into his backpack, then spent the next few hours speeding to every single hospital in the city or within thirty miles of the city’s borders, finding and copying any reports of treatments for either Leonard or Lisa Snart.

According to Lisa, once the police started looking they’d found dozens of injury reports from different hospitals — but no previous flags had been raised because the incidents were few and far between, all explained away, and only a few for each hospital.

Those files had helped establish a pattern of abuse, but the police had only looked within Central City, and Lewis Snart had been smart enough to take his kids out further than that several times.

Barry wasn’t going to let that extra evidence go to waste. If he could ensure that Snart never got out of prison, that’s what he would do.

* * *

Barry scrubbed at his face in the dimly lit bathroom, hoping the cool water would leave him feeling a little more human and a lot less zombie-like.

Although Gideon hadn’t alerted him to any abuse, Barry had spent the entire night envisioning worst case scenarios when he should have been sleeping.

He had to review the footage that morning, he was excruciatingly aware of that; however he was more than willing to put it off a little longer. Instead, he sped out to a corner store for recordable VHS tapes. When he returned a few minutes later, he went to work rigging the room’s VCR to his computer tablet with some strangely spliced cables. Cisco had thoughtfully included a hand drawn diagram to help him, labeled ‘MacGyvering 101’.”

When Barry was done and had successfully saved a test video file of a barking cat from his tablet onto a video cassette, he finally asked Gideon about the events of the night before.

“Would you like me to replay the footage for you, Barry Allen?”

That was a lot of footage, even to play at high speed, especially considering he’d planted nine cameras including Bumble and Destroyer.

“Can you tell me what happened? You know…the bad things. And we can look deeper from there?”

“Of course,” Gideon answered. “Lewis Snart arrived home at 7:49 p.m., carrying meals purchased from a large chain restaurant that appeared to hold an unhealthy ratio of caloric vs. nutritional density. He shared the food with his children with minimal fuss, although he made several comments regarding how much effort he exerts towards their care. These comments were inaccurate, as my surveillance indicates that in most areas of parental responsibility he only meets the lowest accepted standards, and is exceptionally lacking in others.”

“Well, you’re not wrong,” Barry muttered.

“I deal in facts, Barry Allen. Of course I am not wrong. Do you wish me to continue?”

“Please,” Barry answered, quietly wondering if his future self had intended to program Gideon to be so snarky.

“Very well. Lewis Snart insulted Leonard Snart twenty-nine times, and Lisa Snart eleven times, although he also paid her six compliments that I believe would be considered ‘back-handed’. Lewis Snart raised his voice beyond reasonable levels in anger seven times, and was physically threatening or imposing towards both children in almost every situation. He committed physical assaults upon Leonard Snart twelve times; four times with an open palm, twice with an elbow, three times with a closed fist, twice times with his knee, and once with a ceramic mug.”

“ _Jesus—_ ”

“Lewis Snart committed physical assaults upon Lisa Snart in two instances, both with an open palm. It is my opinion he may have assaulted her a third time, however he was distracted by Leonard Snart. In addition, he locked Lisa Snart in a small, dark room at 9:04 p.m.”

“When did he let her out?” Barry asked, voice shaking with bottled up anger. He’d known that Lisa and Len would be mistreated — Lisa had made it clear that the abuse was every single day — but he hadn’t realized just how constant and unyielding it was.

“Seventeen minutes and thirty-one seconds ago.”

Barry checked the clock with a long, low noise of dismay. It was after nine-thirty in the morning; Lisa had been locked up in that closet for over twelve hours, probably terrified the entire time.

“P-play the footage. Just the feeds they’re in...start from a few minutes before Snart let Lisa out,” Barry instructed, desperate to see how Len and Lisa were holding up that morning.

Four feeds appeared on the wall. The first was in a strange grayscale that Barry recognized from other thermographic footage he’d seen; the cramped room was dark and empty save for Lisa’s tiny frame, blanket over her shoulders. She was sitting very still in the corner far from the door, her arms wrapped around her knees and her head resting upon them. The only movements she made were tiny and jerky, like she was sniffing or hiccupping.

The second and third feeds showed the same room — Len’s bedroom — from different angles; one fixed and one roving. Bumble shifted until Barry could see Len more clearly. Len was sitting in a very similar manner to his sister, but instead of hiding his face, he was glaring at his closed bedroom door in fury. His eyes were tired, and Barry suspected he hadn’t slept at all.

“You need to let her out,” he said loudly, voice rising to a near yell as he spoke. When he got no response, he added, “She has a scheduled practice! Her coach will be _looking_ for her!”

Seeing Len visibly angry and uncontrolled was so strange, but at the same time, it was something of a relief. If Len could still get angry at his father, could still fight back, then he hadn’t reached that point of helpless fear that Barry had seen in his eyes in the future.

_And he won’t_ , Barry promised himself.

The last feed, Destroyer, showed Lewis Snart calmly finishing the dregs of his coffee and walking down the hall slowly, as though completely unaware of his son’s anger. He reached a door and opened it, taking three steps into the room to stop and stare at Len on the floor.

“What have I told you about raising your voice to me?”

Len swallowed visibly, but his shoulders remained square. Although he didn’t look directly at his father, the anger never left his face.

“That if the neighbors ever hear me, I’ll regret it,” he said through gritted teeth.

“Right. So don’t test me. You won’t get anywhere.”

“I was just—”

“You just think I’m an idiot,” Lewis snapped. “You think I don’t know that you’re using your sister’s commitments to get her out of being punished.”

“She didn’t _do_ anythin—”

“Shut your mouth, kid, or I’ll shut it for you. You were in trouble, and she got herself involved. That’s more than enough. She needs to learn that you can’t always protect her. You’re a disappointment and we both know you’ll only let her down just like you let me down. The more she clings to you, the more you’re going to drag her into the dirt with you.” Snart examined the mug in his hand as he stepped closer, and then squatted down to get right in Len’s face. “You know, I can’t believe that even after I beat some sense into you last night, you’re still mouthy, still trying to tell me what to do. When’re you ever gonna learn? This is on you, son.”

Snart swung his arm, slamming the mug into Len’s jaw, Len’s head snapping back with a thud against the wall.

“You cracked my mug,” Snart added icily, tossing it onto Len’s neatly made bed. “You’re lucky I didn’t like this one.”

“Gideon, pause the feeds.” Barry had to force the words out. He was trembling with rage, and only the constant reminder of what he was there to do could stop him from losing his grip on it completely. “Why didn’t you tell me about Len’s injury from the incident with the mug?”

“Because it did not fall within the parameters that you set for me.”

“He could have a concussion! That warrants a hospital visit!”

“That is incorrect, Barry Allen. The combined angle, velocity and force applied by Lewis Snart, while inadvisable, has only a thirteen percent likelihood of causing a concussion when connecting with Leonard Snart’s jaw in such a way and at his current age and size. In the unlikely event that such a concussion occurred, it would be considered mild and would not require a visit to the hospital.”

Barry dropped his head in his hands and took several long, deep breaths to steady himself. Gideon was right — not about the concussion, though probably about that as well — but she _had_ only been following his instructions.

“Okay,” he said softly, voice shaking as he shoved his frustration and helplessness down as far as he could manage. He sat up straight again, knowing he had to force himself to keep watching. “But from now on, we’re back to what I said before. I want to know any time _anything_ happens that might be relevant to Len and Lisa's abuse. Now, please play the footage.”

The feeds continued, all three in Len’s room showing different angles of the same thing. Snart left the room with one last glare at his son, Destroyer’s feed following behind him, as Len worked his jaw carefully, blinking away tears.

“I don’t care what you do to me, just let her _out_ , you piece of…” Len muttered faintly under his breath, far too low for Snart’s ears as he continued down the hall. “Just stop torturing her.”

“Sh-shut off...shut off the display for Bumble and for the camera in Len’s bedroom, please Gideon.” Destroyer was showing Lewis Snart heading towards his own room, and Barry wasn’t sure he could ignore Len’s pain enough to pay attention to everything else.

“As you request, Barry Allen.”

Two of the feeds disappeared, leaving only Destroyer’s roving cam and the small, dark room.

Lewis Snart stormed into his bedroom, slamming the door behind him so fast and hard that Destroyer II only narrowly escaped a fate as crushing as that of its predecessor.

On the darker feed, Lisa’s head snapped up at the noise, her eyes wide and her expression scared, though it was difficult to tell through the unusual thermal filter.

Snart unlocked the door jerkily and little Lisa flinched at every noise. Light flooded into the closet when Snart pulled the door open, causing Lisa to wince and blink quickly against the sudden brightness.

Destroyer moved, hovering over Snart’s shoulder, and Barry got a long, clear look at Lisa’s face. She didn’t look as hurt, physically, as her brother, but she looked absolutely petrified.

Barry hadn’t really gotten any sleep the night before, but at that moment he was convinced he’d slept better than Lisa had.

Her eyes were swollen from crying, her face was red and blotchy, and she had tear tracks down her cheeks.

“You’re goddamn lucky you’re gonna make something of your life, kid. Otherwise I’d leave you in here till Monday,” Snart growled. “Go clean your face and get to practice. And I better not hear one word about you being anything less than perfect for your coach. I’m not handing over my hard earned dollars just for you to waste them. Don’t you keep disappointing me.”

Lisa was out the door like a shot, despite stumbling on shaky legs, ducking the open-handed slap her father aimed at the back of her head.

“And make that good for nothing brother of yours take you,” Snart added. “Not like he’s got anything better to do to keep him out of trouble.”

Barry watched Destroyer’s feed intently for several more minutes. It was nothing interesting, Snart seemed to be getting together a fresh uniform for a shift that day, but Barry refused to look away until he heard the echo of the front door opening and closing, signaling that Lisa and Len had made it out of the house safely.

He let out a ragged breath, and then swallowed past the hard lump of worry that had formed in his throat.

“I know I can’t,” Barry told Gideon, “but I want to tear that man apart.”

“Killing Lewis Snart would likely cause irreparable damage to your timeline, Barry Allen.”

He knew that; o _f course_ he knew that. He, Cisco and Gideon had had a long and in depth discussion on the pros and cons of altering the past, on how time was elastic enough to pull small events back into line in some way or another, yet fragile enough to fall apart if large changes were made. Because of that, Barry and Cisco had been extremely calculating over what could and should be interfered with when they put together their plan.

Barry had to stay on track. He couldn’t deviate without risking too much.

“However,” Gideon added, “should you decide this is an acceptable risk, my knowledge spans numerous safe and untraceable methods to dispose of human remains.”

“So does mine,” Barry muttered. “But don’t tempt me.”

“Very well.”

“Can you please start cutting together the rest of the footage, Gideon? I need you to make a file containing the clips of all the instances of abuse, physical and emotional that we have. Make sure it’s all timestamped, and try to use the fixed cams where you can. Or at least make Bumble and Destroyer’s movements less obvious if possible. We can’t really let anyone from this time know that we have tiny flying cameras.”

“That should not be a problem, Barry Allen.”

“Thanks. And for the...the locked room...” Barry paused. “Did Snart bother Lisa at all during the night after he locked her in?”

“Aside from frightening her when he banged on the door before he went to sleep, he did not.”

“Okay. Then for that feed just show the first few minutes after Lisa was locked in, and the few minutes before and during Snart releasing her. Make sure those timestamps are clear, as well. When you've got all the footage cut, Bluetooth it all to my tablet.”

“Certainly.”

Barry took another deep breath, casting his eyes over the stack of papers and files that took up a large section of the motel room floor. He had to remind himself what he was doing, what he was trying to accomplish. The things he’d seen had been horrifying, but from what Lisa had told him they weren’t anything out of the ordinary. He wanted to find young Len and Lisa, to scoop them up and run them to safety; wanted to run back even further in time to do that before they could even suffer _any_ of what he’d seen. But he, Lisa and Cisco had all agreed, he couldn’t — and shouldn’t — change everything.

_They’re okay,_ Barry reminded himself, ignoring the tiny voice in his head telling him that they _weren’t..._ not in his time. _They’re out of the house, they’ve survived. Just get the rest of this organized and everything will be okay._

* * *

Barry had reviewed and made further cuts and edits to the footage, painful though that was. He was almost done recording a copy of the final video onto each VHS tape he had when Gideon interrupted him again.

“Barry Allen, it would appear that Leonard Snart is discussing his father.”

“Show me.”

“...sure you won’t get in trouble for this?”

“Nah,” Len answered. He was sprawled on a couch that Barry didn’t recognize. The boy he was talking to looked roughly Len’s age, maybe a little older, with white-blonde hair and a toothy grin. “He wanted me gone. Besides, he thinks I’m with Lisa, and she won’t say anything. But I don’t have too long...I need to be back at the rink before she leaves practice. She’s only nine; I don’t want her walking home alone.”

“Aww, c’mon babe,” the guy said, shifting so he was hovering over Len. “You said she’s a smart kid, right?”

“Don’t call me babe. And yeah, she’s a smart kid.” Len’s tone was cool, though not cool enough to bother his...friend? His boyfriend? Barry didn’t know which would be more accurate. Whoever he was, he seemed comfortable putting his hands on Len, but Len didn’t make much effort to reciprocate. “Notice how I emphasize the word _kid_.”

“It’s not a long walk. She can handle it.” He leaned in for what looked like a kiss, but Len clenched his jaw and turned his head away.

“If you’re trying to get me to pick you over my baby sister, Jake,” Len told him sharply, pushing Jake off him with a glare, “you’re not going to get very far.”

Jake groaned overdramatically, which Barry supposed was normal for a teenager. Or at least, for a teenager who wasn’t in Len’s shoes. “Don’t be like that, Lenny,” Jake said with a huff. “That’s not what I meant, okay? We just don’t get much time together. Sneaking around is hard enough, but it’s even harder when your Dad’s so strict.”

“I know,” Len told him, his voice a little less defensive and a little more understanding. He narrowed his eyes thoughtfully for a moment, in such a familiar way that it made Barry’s chest ache. “I have an idea. It’s my birthday in a few weeks, and every year Gramps likes to make a big deal out of it. He has me and Lisa stay with him for a whole weekend so we can have fun, and Dad uses it as an excuse to go with his buddies on some douche-cop boys’ weekend. I could sneak out of Gramps’ house pretty easily, and my place will be empty...think you can get away for a night?”

“I’m there,” Jack replied with a wide grin.

_/* “That part of it...it started a few months before Dad got busted, right after Lenny’s birthday. */_

Barry’s stomach churned and he tried to push the awful thoughts out of his head. Even if this...this plan of Len’s was what set off Snart’s sexual abuse, it didn’t matter. Barry was already on track to getting Snart locked up early, to stopping that particular phase of abuse from ever happening in the first place, and getting them out of that house before the fear of that man got so out of control they could never face it.

On the feed Jake was leaning in again, but this time Len didn’t stop him. They pressed their lips together, but Len flinched almost immediately.

“God, your Dad’s a real piece of work,” Jake sighed as he pulled back, tilting Len’s head carefully to look at the swelling and bruising along his jaw and the side of his mouth. “I’ll grab you some more ice. Is anything else hurting?”

Len shrugged nonchalantly, but after a moment of awkward silence he sighed and pulled up his shirt with a wince. His torso was covered in roughly healed scars, but they were obscured by several large bruises, some older, some fresh.

Barry hissed and his horror was mirrored on the projection by Jake. “ _Jesus_. Fuck, Lenny. You gotta tell someone, babe.”

“Stop calling me that.”

Jake didn’t answer, just stared until Len rolled his eyes.

“I tried once before,” Len admitted. His voice was level and calm, but something about his expression told Barry just how difficult this was for Len to say. “But Dad’s a cop. All his buddies are cops. And I’m just some kid they consider trouble. Who do you think they believed? And how do you think he reacted after? He broke my arm in two places, then told everyone I had a friend do it to try and get him in trouble. They bought it.”

“What about your grandfather?”

“He knows, mostly. Not how bad it is, but I can’t tell him that. He’d try to help us, and he can’t, not when the cops think Dad’s okay. Last time he tried Dad threatened to have him arrested. Gramps is the only person we can go to when it gets really bad; if Dad finds a way to keep him away from us then we’re completely screwed.”

“We could run away,” Jake insisted, with all the bravery and naivety of a teenaged boy. “You and me, we could get some stuff together and just go. Make sure he couldn’t find us.”

Len snorted. “Don’t be stupid. He’s a _cop_. And anyway, I can’t leave Lisa,” he argued. “I can handle Dad if it means staying with her.”

Something changed there, Barry knew, because Len did eventually leave, though Barry doubted it had anything to do with Jake. Barry could probably guess what the trigger was, though he refused to. Regardless, whatever made Len leave his little sister behind, there was no sign of it in his expression.

“There’s gotta be someone that can help you.”

Len looked Jake dead in the eye. “My sister and I aren’t important to anyone but each other, Jake. We’re nobodies. Why would anyone want to help us?”

Barry shook his head, fresh guilt sweeping over him. “Because you deserve to be helped when you need it,” he said quietly, wishing Len could hear him.

“Besides,” Len added, sending Jake a wry smirk, “how can I trust anyone if they claim they want to help? Nobody does anything for nothing.”


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I named Len’s grandfather Lance. It’s not canon in anywhere that I’m aware of, but the Snarts seem to favor ‘L’ names, so…
> 
> Also, everything I know about the US legal system comes from television shows and also googling ‘punishment for child abuse is Missouri’. If anything is hideously wrong I’m sorry, but also since canon doesn’t really gel with a lot of things (like the differences between a crime scene tech and a forensic scientist for example) let’s just pretend this makes sense in the Flash universe.

Once Barry was finished putting all the evidence together it was early afternoon and he had six large, thick envelopes. Inside each was a video cassette of footage, several floppy disks containing transcriptions of every hospital record and a copy of every entry from the kids’ notebooks, photos of the locked room and of the original notebooks, plus hard copies of everything from the floppy disks just to be safe.

Each one of those envelopes — though they were more like parcels once he’d finished putting everything into them — was marked ‘URGENT’ and contained more than enough evidence to put Lewis Snart away for a very, very long time. In the original timeline Snart had been sentenced to over forty years on a third of the evidence and half as many potential charges.

All Barry had left to do was drop off the evidence, pick up his tech, and find a starting point from which he could pass Mach 2 before reaching the empty land that would one day become S.T.A.R. Labs. He was so close to going back to his time, to seeing how his changes had affected the timeline. It was both an exciting and a nerve-wracking thought.

With the packets in hand, Barry sped through the city making his deliveries. One packet went straight to the District Attorney’s office, placed right in the middle of his desk where it couldn’t possibly be missed.

After that, one was left on the desk of each Captain from three of the four CCPD precincts. The packet Barry had just dropped off was at Lewis Snart’s precinct. He almost hadn’t left one there, but Snart was a cop working with them and they should be shown what he was doing, even if they didn’t do anything about it. Considering the ‘buddy’ mentality that seemed to thrive there, he wasn’t holding out much hope of any investigation from them, but that was why he’d made so many copies, after all.

That left only two envelopes, one of which he was about to deliver to his own precinct.

Or, his _future_ precinct, technically.

Captain Singh was probably still in high school and dreaming about joining the academy, but Barry hoped that whoever the current Captain was, they’d be as likely to take the gathered evidence seriously.

Since Barry’s CCPD ID was for that precinct, it was easy enough for him to walk right in — no super speed necessary. He was halfway to the Captain’s door when he stopped, surprised to see the man who was standing in front of him.

“Joe?” Barry could hardly remember the last time he’d seen Joe in an officer’s uniform, but there was no mistaking him. And he should have realized, should have expected it, but he just _hadn’t_.

“Yeah?” Joe answered, looking over at Barry without a hint of recognition on his face. “I’m sorry, have we met?”

Barry’s brain whirred. Joe always knew when he was lying, but then again, that was a skill developed over years of parenting.

“Uh, no,” Barry replied, quickly trying to patch together something believable from the lie he’d originally planned on telling anyone who stopped him. “I’m a transfer, just here for a couple of days. But you’re Officer Joe West, right? The guy in the hall pointed you out.” He gestured as vaguely as he could towards the hallway, where several people were going about their business. “I just...have this. For you. Someone downstairs asked me to pass it along.”

“What is it?” Joe asked, taking the envelope Barry was offering him.

“I have no idea,” Barry lied. “He didn’t say. It feels like paperwork, maybe?”

“Okay, what was the guy’s name?”

“He didn’t say that either, sorry.” 

The packet was meant to end up on the Captain’s desk like the others had, but Barry knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that once Joe saw the contents he’d stop at nothing to put Lewis Snart behind bars. He wasn’t a Detective, not yet, but Barry knew that Joe wouldn’t let that get in his way, he’d push at anyone he had to, to make sure the case went somewhere.

Trusting the evidence to a man he knew was honorable was better than hoping the Captain would be the same, Barry decided.

“You might want to take a look at that as soon as you can,” Barry said. “It says it’s urgent.”

“Yeah, thanks, I’ll do that,” Joe agreed. “Oh, sorry, what did you say your name was, again?” he asked as he pulled open the envelope, peering down inside it.

Barry didn’t wait around to answer; he sped away before Joe could look back up.

* * *

After Barry had dropped off the final envelope and returned Lisa and Len’s notebooks to their original hiding places, he collected the tech that he’d planted in the Snart house and went right back to the motel to wait it out.

Bumble and Destroyer were still tailing their targets; Barry had to know Lisa and Len were safe before he returned to his own time.

It had only been a little over an hour, but Barry was getting extremely anxious. What if Snart’s Captain warned Snart? What if Snart got to Len and Lisa before anyone stopped him, or before—?

“Barry Allen, Leonard Snart is being approached by his grandfather, Lance Snart. Would you like me to bring up the footage?”

_Yes_ , Barry wanted to immediately reply. It was on the tip of his tongue before he realized that the more he saw, the more he’d want to see. And the longer he waited around, watching, the greater the chances that he’d be tempted to change something else.

“Just tell me, Gideon. Is Len’s grandfather helping?” It had been a bit of a risk, dropping off that last envelope to Lance Snart, but from everything he’d heard and everything he’d seen, the man cared about his grandkids, and someone had to get Lisa and Len to some kind of safety in case bureaucracy and red tape got in the way and slowed things down.

“It would appear so. He is insisting that they find Lisa Snart and that the siblings will stay with him for some time.”

“And is Len going with him?”

“He is questioning the circumstances, however he is going willingly.”

“Okay,” Barry said. “That’s...that’s good.”

Barry thought back to the letter he’d left in that hidden box, under Len’s notebooks. It wasn’t much, and he’d argued with himself for ages before actually leaving it, but he hoped it set Len’s mind at ease.

That evening, Barry gave in and watched Destroyer’s feed with great satisfaction as Joe and another officer hauled Lewis Snart in for questioning.

After that he gave himself a moment to check Bumble’s feed just once. Lance Snart was sitting down in serious conversation with Len and Lisa; Lisa snuggled into her brother’s side as Lance explained to them what would probably happen from there.

Barry smiled to himself. He didn’t know exactly what the future would hold, but he was hopeful. “Gideon, you can call Bumble and Destroyer now. It’s time to go.”

* * *

_Len,_

_You’re probably wondering who I am and how I knew you needed help. All I can tell you is that I’m no one you know; I’m just a guy who saw enough to know that something needed to change._

_Things will probably get complicated, but you and your sister are strong and can get through anything. Your father is a terrible person who did terrible things to you both but I want you to know that he will never get an opportunity to do them again. I know he held a lot of power over you, but that’s in the past. You don’t need to be afraid of him anymore._

_You probably don’t trust me or my motives, so let me promise you in writing; I don’t expect anything from you in return and you don’t owe me a thing._

_I helped you because you needed it. Because it was the right thing to do._

_Since so many people have let you down and ignored you when they should have helped, you must be convinced that no one cares about you. You’re wrong, and I hope that one day you can believe that._

_You have your whole future ahead of you. Enjoy it._

-       _A friend_

* * *

_!!! FLASH !!!_

_“Lewis Snart, you have been found guilty of multiple counts of child abuse, child neglect and child endangerment. Your crimes resulted in countless instances of physical and emotional harm upon your two children. As each child was under the age of fourteen when the abuse began, according to the state of Missouri you have been trialed for several Class A felonies. I hereby sentence you to a total of one hundred and twenty-seven years of incarceration. You will be eligible for parole in no less than seventy years.”_

 

_!!! FLASH !!!_  

_Barry is in the woods with Len, mask off. Len is grinning at him, but he blinks in surprise and confusion for several moments until his expression settles somewhere between curious and smug._

_“You’re so much prettier without the mask, Barry.”_

_“W-what?” Barry stammered and then shook his head, visibly refocusing. “We have to talk. I know Cisco told you who I am.”_

_“Can’t really blame the kid for giving you up. You or his brother? Come on, I put him in a tight spot.”_

 

_!!! FLASH !!!_  

_Eddie and Barry are standing in the CCPD, Eddie showing Barry a diamond ring._

 

_!!! FLASH !!!_  

_Len is leaning into Barry’s space, unusually close, by the bar in Saints and Sinners._

_“There has to...Snart, there has to be something you want that I can get.”_

_“I’ll think about it.” Len’s eyes track over Barry as his lips curl into a smirk. He turns to leave and then pauses, turning back with his eyes narrowed. “But you’ll need to be willing to compromise on your plan.”_

 

_!_ _!! FLASH !!!_

_Dr. Wells is hovering over Barry, ready to kill him. Len has the cold gun aimed at Wells’ back. There’s a strange, complex expression on Len’s face, like shock, awe, confusion and understanding all swirling together._

 

_!_ _!! FLASH !!!_  

_All of the metas are in the pipeline. Len is standing next to Barry. They are both quiet, yet neither appears to be uncomfortable._

 

_!!! FLASH !!!_  

_Barry and Caitlin walk into the cortex where Lisa is in Cisco’s lap, kissing him frantically._

_“Not again,” Caitlin sighs. “Can’t you guys get a room?”_

_“This_ is _a room,” Lisa says with a smirk._

 

_!!! FLASH !!!_  

_Len is in the pipeline alone, but he’s not locked up. He’s leaning against a wall outside Mark Mardon’s cell, arms folded and eyebrows raised._

_“Why are you even helping them?”_

_“They’re not so bad,” Len answers. “Besides, Cisco makes my sister smile.”_

 

_!!! FLASH !!!_

_“So, allies?”_

_Len gives Barry an arrogant and playful grin. “Why Barry, that’s quite the proposition. Shouldn’t you buy me dinner first?”_

_Barry rolls his eyes, but his mouth twitches a little, too. “I’m serious, Snart.”_

_“I feel like allies should use first names, don’t you?”_

_“Okay then...Len.”_

 

_!!! FLASH !!!_  

_Barry is standing opposite Len and Lisa, both of whom are grinning widely._

_“What’s the occasion?” Barry asks as Len hands him a flute of champagne._

_“We’re a little fuzzy on the details,” Len told him, “but it seems that our not-so-loving father got a little angry and mouthed off to the wrong inmate after yet another failed appeal to overturn his conviction. He got his head beaten in. Permanent vegetative state. We’ve elected to pull the plug.”_

_“You’re celebrating his death? I mean, I know he was… Isn’t this kind of morbid?”_

_“He’s not important enough to celebrate his death, silly,” Lisa answered. “We’re celebrating our survival.”_

 

_!!! FLASH !!!_  

_There’s an empty room. It’s the time vault._


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Considering how angsty this has been, I've aimed more for a "hopeful" happy ending than an ending filled with fluff, because I wanted it to feel as realistic as possible (at least, within the craziness of The Flash universe haha). I hope you enjoy it.

Barry tripped over his own feet as he landed in the time vault. It was completely empty; even the treadmill was missing. He was about to head to the cortex when he realized what a terrible idea that could end up being, so instead he pulled Gideon out of his backpack.

“Gideon, are we back to the right time? I don’t want to stumble across anyone and find out there’s another me right beside them or anything.”

“Yes, we are in the correct time.”

“How much…” Barry hesitated, but he knew he couldn’t just bury his head in the sand. “Have I done any significant damage to the timeline?”

“You were very careful to avoid any disastrous alterations, Barry Allen. I think you will be pleasantly surprised.”

* * *

On his way to the cortex, Barry couldn’t help but wonder exactly how much of what he’d seen in the Speed Force had already occurred and how much was still to happen. Some of the flashes, like the night in the woods, were close enough to Barry’s memories that they were easy to place. But others, not so much.

Were Cisco and Lisa together? Or would that come later?

Were Barry and Len allies, or was that a glimpse of something they were working towards? He wasn’t sure how to even find out whether they’d started working together or if they still had nothing but their tentative agreement.

What happened with the metas? It looked like Snart hadn’t betrayed him in this timeline, but why hadn’t he?

Was Lewis Snart already dead? Or would that happen in the future?

Barry had so many questions and no idea how to ask them without letting on that he’d made a change — and a long term one, at that.

But one question floated in his head above all the others — it was so much less important, objectively, but Barry couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Was he imagining things, or did Len seem to have been flirting with him in those flashes? Was he...did he mean anything by it? He seemed more...more open, more playful than Barry remembered, but it was hard to tell much by a handful of moments that passed by so quickly.

Barry squared his shoulders when he reached the cortex, preparing himself to hide everything he’d done when he faced Caitlin and Cisco.

But he wasn’t prepared at all for the man he found leaning casually against the computer desk, perfectly fine and looking exactly how Barry remembered him before...before the morning Barry had seen his body.

“Len! You’re...you’re okay!” Barry was across the room in an instant, only barely managing to hold off from wrapping his arms around Len in a long, hard hug. He couldn’t quite stop himself from clasping his hands on Len’s shoulders and squeezing; he needed tangible proof that Len was alive and well...that Barry hadn’t let Snart senior kill him. “I’m so glad to see you.”

“Well that’s...unusual,” Len replied. He made no attempt to shrug Barry’s hands off himself, but he was standing very, very still. “Quite touching,” he added with a deliberate look at Barry’s right hand, “but unusual. Really, Barry, did you run into a wall on the way here?”

“No,” Barry said with a laugh. He was being weird, he knew he was being weird, but he couldn’t help himself. “I’m just...like I said, I’m glad to see you.” He bit his tongue before he said anything he shouldn’t; before he told Len how happy he was to see him alive, to see the sparkle of amusement in his eyes, to know that Lewis Snart would never, ever hurt Len the way he had in the previous timeline. He gave Len’s shoulders another squeeze then forced himself to let go, dropping his hands to his sides and fighting the urge to reach out again.

“I didn’t say you had to take your hands off,” Len said, his lip curling into a half smirk as he recovered from his surprise.

“Why do you do that?” Barry asked; of all the questions he had, it was the only one he could actually ask. “Why do you flirt with me all the time?”

“Maybe I like to keep you on your toes.”

Sure, that was probably all it had been in the beginning, but it didn’t seem like that with Len standing so close, his expression so much more open than Barry remembered from the previous timeline. “Is that really all it is?”

“That depends. Why are you always watching me?”

“What? No. I’m not...not watching you,” Barry denied with a stammer, though he probably had been. Even in the old timeline, he couldn’t keep his eyes off Len, though he’d always justified it to himself as suspicion and caution.

Len’s eyes narrowed. He had that look — the one Barry had long since recognized as Len thinking, planning, making mental connections. After a moment his smirk widened, turning into an actual grin. “Well, well, well—” he cut himself off as he spotted something over Barry’s shoulder. “To be continued,” he muttered, though he seemed more calculating than disappointed.

“Barry, I found this—”

Barry spun around in surprise, nearly knocking Len over as he moved. “Eddie?! You...you’re...” He couldn’t say alive, but he had no idea what else to say.

Eddie was standing just a few feet away, looking exactly like Barry remembered him. He had a bemused expression on his face. “I’m what?”

“You’re...here,” Barry finished lamely.

“Okay…” Eddie was eying him like Barry was losing his marbles, but he was obviously used to Barry’s weirdness, because he didn’t question it further.

“Well that’s a shame,” Len said as he took a few steps forward, pausing for just a second when he stood shoulder to shoulder with Barry. The firm feeling of his arm pressed against Barry’s lasted only for a moment, then Len moved a little further away. “It would seem the warm welcome and...unbridled...enthusiasm isn’t because I’m such a special snowflake, after all. Hello, Detective.”

“Cold,” Eddie greeted, voice flat and disapproving. “Or as I prefer to think of you; criminal who should be rotting in maximum security but has somehow managed to convince us that he’s more worthwhile on our side.”

“Well, that’s an inefficient moniker. I think I’ll stick with Cold,” Len purred, clearly baiting Eddie. “Or Len.”

“Yeah, well, when you finally turn on us and we lock you up in Iron Heights, I’m sure your cellmate will be willing to oblige. Unless you get a nice big Daddy, then I guess he’ll call you whatever he wants.”

Len opened his mouth to retort, but Barry was quicker, fueled by memories that Len would thankfully never have. “That’s not funny,” he snapped, voice more angry than he’d meant it to sound, though not quite as angry as he felt deep in the pit of his stomach.

Eddie looked startled, then chastised, then horribly, horribly guilty. “Of course not. I’m sorry Barry, I was being a jerk. I should never have…” he trailed off, shooting Len a quick, irritated glance though his face was still filled with remorse. “I shouldn’t let Cold get under my skin, but that’s no excuse. I would never approve of that kind of abuse, not under any circumstances...and more importantly the guards at Iron Heights don’t let that kind of thing happen. Your Dad is totally safe, I swear.”

“That’s not…” Barry drifted off, clenching his jaw. Eddie didn’t mean it like that. He doesn’t even know, he reminded himself. None of them do, because it never happened. “Yeah,” he sighed after a moment. “I know that. It’s just...not funny.”

It was a comment made in poor taste, Barry knew. It wasn’t meant to be as targeted as it sounded to him; Eddie wasn’t that kind of guy.

An awkward silence settled between the three of them, Barry still trying to stem what was left of his anger and Eddie looking like he wanted to speak but couldn’t settle on what to say. Len kept looking between them, sending smug little smirks at Eddie, but watching Barry like he was still trying to work him out.

“Well, I’m glad you’re all here...” Cisco said from the doorway, eying all three of them questioningly, “...wallowing in weird, uncomfortable stares. Did I miss something?”

“No, it’s all fine,” Barry answered.

“Okay, good, because I’ve got…” Cisco’s voice drifted off as he approached. He tensed as he got nearer, eyes losing focus and brows drawing together until it seemed he was looking right through Barry instead of at him. After a few seconds he shook it off and blinked rapidly. “I’ve uh…”

His eyes widened at Barry and he dug his teeth into his bottom lip. Cisco rushed forward and dragged Barry by the arm a few feet away. Keeping his back to Len and Eddie, he mouthed, What did you do?

Barry couldn’t answer while Len and Eddie were in the room, but he didn’t need to, because Cisco took the hint from his grimace.

“I’ve got to go with Barry,” he turned and announced to the others. “That’s uh...that’s why I’m glad you’re all here.”

“Go where?” Len asked, voice suspicious.

“For…” Cisco floundered, but he recovered quickly. “For his monthly speed and cell tests.”

“You did those last week.” And hadn’t Len just been accusing Barry of watching him? Interesting, since it seemed like he paid a whole lot of attention to Barry in return.

Barry nearly said as much, but Cisco spoke before he could.

“Right. We did. But they were inconsistent. So...retest.”

“And why does that mean you’re glad we’re here?” Eddie asked.

“Because...someone needs to stay and monitor for crime.”

“Well, if you’ll excuse me,” Eddie said, placing a stack of papers on the desk beside him, “I actually just came to drop these off. And now I’m going to monitor for crime at my actual job.”

“I guess that means that I volunteer,” Len offered dryly.

“I’m monitoring you too, Cold,” Eddie retorted.

“I knew you liked me.”

* * *

“Hey Eddie, wait.”

By the time Barry had reassured Cisco that he would explain everything — “Yes, absolutely everything Cisco, okay?” — and caught up with Eddie, they were nearly to Eddie’s car.

“Look, Barry, if this is about what I said, I really am sorry. I don’t know what came over me; I know it was hugely awful and inappropriate—”

“No, it’s not. I mean, yeah, it was,” Barry corrected, “but this isn’t about that. You apologized, and I know you didn’t mean what you said. Although since you brought it up...Eddie, that really wasn’t like you.”

“Yeah, I know,” Eddie answered, looking chagrined. “I know I’ve been off lately. To be honest, I guess I’m feeling a little useless. I know it’s childish, but...well. It’s hard to feel like you matter when you’re surrounded by people who are constantly saving the entire city.”

How could Eddie feel useless? Barry wondered. He’d been the one to…

Oh.

Eddie hadn’t stopped Wells in the current timeline. He couldn’t have, or else he’d be dead.

“Eddie…”

“No, it’s fine,” Eddie reassured him. “It’s my issue. I’ll deal with it. And I really shouldn’t let Cold rile me up so easily.”

“Yeah...that’s not really like you, either.”

Eddie seemed to spend a few seconds on an internal debate, and then he sighed. “I know. It’s just that for a while there I thought maybe I could help. That maybe there was something…” he paused, staring at the ground in consternation. Before, in the original timeline, Barry had thought that Eddie’s self-sacrifice had been a split second decision, but he was no longer so sure. “Anyway,” Eddie continued, “I guess I just hate that Cold managed to help where I couldn’t. It’s a bit petty, I know, but he’s one of the bad guys and he still got to be more of a hero than I ever could.” He clenched his jaw. “And, Barry...what does it say about me when someone we can’t trust not to stab us in the back can still do more good than I can?”

“It doesn’t say anything about you, Eddie. You’re not…you’re not being fair on yourself. You are a great man, and an excellent detective. Just because you can’t run really fast and you don’t have a gun that freezes things...that doesn’t take anything away from you. You still go out there and put your life on the line every day, against the regular bad guys and against the metas. You are a hero, Eddie.”

“Wow, Barry, that’s…” Eddie gave him a tremulous smile. “I can’t tell you how much it means to me that you’ve said that. Thank you.”

“It’s the truth. I believe in you, Eddie. And I think you’re a hero, even if you don’t.” Barry rubbed his hand along the back of his neck, trying to figure out how to broach the subject he’d actually wanted to speak to Eddie about. After a moment, he decided the direct approach was best. “While we’re talking, I actually wanted to speak to you about Iris.”

Barry didn’t know how parallel this timeline was to the old one, but since Eddie was still alive, he figured that had to mean Eddie and Iris were still together; that they were probably going to get married, although Barry had no idea whether Eddie had even asked yet.

“What about Iris?” Eddie’s smile faded slightly and he shifted uncomfortably. Assuming things in the current timeline had moved similarly to the old one, Barry didn’t blame him.

A part of Barry, a tiny part of him that had held onto his love for Iris since he was a child, wondered if things could have been different. And it was long, long overdue, but that part of him was finally ready to let go. Barry had figured out a lot of things over the past several days, and one of those things was that Iris West was his best friend — would always be his best friend, his family — and more importantly, Barry was okay with her never being anything other than that.

“I want you to know that I support her. And you. You both, that is, your relationship. I know I haven’t always been great about it. But that’s behind me, I promise. You’re good for each other and I want you both to be happy.”

Barry hadn’t even realized that Eddie’s shoulders had still been a little hunched until Eddie straightened, looking Barry right in the eye with a growing smile. “Do you mean that?”

“I really, really do.”

“I’m so glad to hear you say that, Barry,” Eddie said, his entire demeanor shifting until he was practically radiating happiness. “I love Iris, and I still want to ask her to marry me. When I do, and if she says yes, are you going to be okay with that? With, you know, there not being an ‘Iris West-Allen’?”

“Yeah, I am,” Barry said honestly. "Iris is the most important woman in my life, but Eddie, she’s in love with you, and you make her happy. It doesn't matter what Wells' newspaper says, because I'm not her future, you are."

“That’s…” Eddie beamed at him. “Thanks, Barry.”

“For the record, I know Iris. She’s gonna say yes.”

“I hope you’re right.”

Barry grinned at him. “I am. So remember this conversation when you guys are planning who to include in your wedding party.”

* * *

By the time Barry and Cisco had finished their conversation, Cisco’s brainstorming room — which Barry had led them to, much to Cisco’s surprise — was covered in empty food containers and Barry was pleasantly full, at least for the moment.

It had been a long and eye-opening discussion. He’d learned that, no, Cisco and Lisa weren’t a couple, though things had seemed to be slowly heading in that direction since Lisa and Len had helped them with the metas.

Cisco had told him so many things, things that made perfect sense and other things that threw Barry for a loop. But the crux of the matter was that Len hadn't betrayed him over the metas, and had been the one to stop Dr. Wells. Barry and Len didn’t just have a shaky agreement anymore, they were actual allies.

Cisco had sounded like he still didn’t understand Len’s motives, especially in regards to Len’s push to begin the rehabilitation of the metas instead of just holding them, but of course Barry did.

“There’s good in him,” Barry had insisted when he and Cisco had finished telling their respective stories. Cisco couldn’t argue, not with everything that had happened, and everything Barry had told him. Throughout their conversation Cisco had remembered more and more of the original timeline, and by the time Barry made his way back to the cortex to speak with Len, Cisco was texting Lisa with sad eyes and shaky hands, making plans to see her later that day.

Barry wondered just how soon he and Caitlin would be interrupting Cisco and Lisa in the cortex like he’d seen in the Speed Force. Pretty soon, if Cisco’s expression had been anything to go by.

The cortex was empty of everyone except Len when Barry reached it. It probably wasn’t the best place for the conversation that Barry wanted to have, but it would have to do. Barry needed to know more about what had happened, and more importantly, he needed to see if he was pinning his hopes on anything real, or if he needed to begin putting his feelings for Len in a tiny little box that he could then shove to the back of his mind.

Len was leaning against the glass wall; the one he’d left that message on seemingly forever ago, before Barry rewrote the parts of Len’s history he thought he could get away with. It looked almost like he was waiting for Barry.

And once again, Barry was filled with questions that he couldn’t ask. He certainly couldn’t ask Len about what his life was like after Lewis Snart went to prison, not out of the blue like this, unless he wanted to look suspicious. And even after Cisco told him everything he could, there were so many things Barry wanted to know, things that Len could answer — but he couldn’t ask them because Barry had been there; Barry should already know.

“How...how are you?” he asked instead.

“Oh, come now, Barry,” Len said with a smirk. “We both know that awkward expression on your face isn’t due to small talk. Say what you want to say. Or...ask what you want to ask.”

Of course...of course Len could tell something was off about Barry immediately. Ignoring all the questions he couldn’t ask, Barry focused on something he could — something that Cisco hadn’t been able to clear up. Even if Barry had asked before, he doubted Len would have given him a straight answer, but Barry didn’t think he was out of line to think he knew Len a little better than a Barry who hadn’t run back in time to change Len’s life.

“Why did you help us with the metas?”

Why didn’t you betray me this time? Barry really wanted to ask. Why did you work with me to make the pipeline more humane and help plan and begin implementing the metas’ rehabilitation instead of turning on me and letting them go like you did before?

Surprise spread across Len’s face for a fraction of a second, but then it disappeared and his smirk curled further on one side. “Not where I was expecting this conversation to go, I must admit.”

“Where were you expecting it to go?”

“I expected to return our previous discussion, obviously,” Len answered, pushing himself off the wall and taking several steps towards Barry. “I assumed you’d want to continue investigating the reasons that I flirt with you. How foolish of me. I shouldn’t make assumptions, not where you’re concerned.”

Barry flushed. He’d almost managed to forget that unfinished conversation, although now that Len had reminded him, he didn’t know how he’d pushed it out of his mind at all.

“Oh. Uh, right.”

It really hadn’t been Barry’s imagination in the Speed Force; even Cisco had confirmed it. The rivalry between The Flash and Captain Cold had started much the same, even to the point of Cisco and Dante’s kidnapping. But when it came down to the guts of the situation, Len just wasn’t as...as cold, for lack of a better word. He didn’t have the same walls built up around himself; he was a criminal, he fought The Flash, but he just...wasn’t that bad. And he couldn’t seem to let any situation pass by without trying to make Barry blush at least once.

And he obviously had quite the talent for it, Barry decided as he fought to keep from shuffling his feet awkwardly.

Len studied Barry for a long, long moment. Eventually he must have taken pity on Barry’s obvious discomfort, because he tore his eyes away with a flicker of a real smile, just long enough for Barry to breathe a sigh of relief.

Then those eyes were back on him, but they were less assessing and more amused. “Alright, I’ll play along,” Len said, stepping in a slow circle around Barry; sizing him up like a target. Like prey. “Have you already forgotten what I got out of our deal, Barry? Anonymity. Freedom from past crimes. That’s why I helped with the metas.”

Barry had to fight the urge to turn and track every move Len made, but he kept his eyes on him as much as he could manage. “No, I know that,” Barry shook his head. “But you could have...could have let the metas go after I held up my end of the deal. They’d have owed you, and you’d still have gotten what you wanted from me. So…” Barry reached out and clasped his hand around Len’s wrist, stopping him in his tracks. “...why didn’t you?”

“Is that what you expected me to do, Barry?” Len asked. He didn’t pull his arm away, just looked thoughtfully at Barry’s hand until Barry’s self-consciousness got the best of him and he let go.

“Not at the time,” he shrugged. “But now I’m curious. You could’ve taken advantage of the situation, but you didn’t.”

“What makes you so sure that I didn’t?” Len took a step in, and Barry could almost feel the strings Len was trying to pull, the game he was trying to play. “Maybe I decided to help you in order to get close to you. Maybe I took advantage of an opportunity to get you to look at me and see something...more appealing than what you used to see.” He grinned devilishly. “Or maybe I just wanted access to S.T.A.R. Labs and the lovely toys within.”

Barry dismissed the last suggestion immediately — Len had proven time and time again he could walk into S.T.A.R. Labs at any time. The rest of it...that Barry could almost believe, especially with the way Len was slowly shifting closer, leaning into his personal space. But something about it didn’t quite ring true.

“Tell me,” Barry said softly, eyes locked with Len’s. “Just be honest. I see you, Len. I’ve always seen you. I just haven’t always trusted you.”

Len stared at Barry, head tilted and eyes narrowed. Considering. After a few seconds he dipped his head just a little, like an acknowledgement.

He hesitated for another moment, but then he spoke. “Once upon a time, somebody helped me and my sister when we really needed it. We didn’t know him and against all odds he didn’t want anything in return...he did it solely because it was the right thing to do.” Len’s lip quirked just a little, as though he couldn’t believe he was opening up, but he didn’t stop; just let out a tiny self-deprecating laugh, then continued. “Ridiculous and sentimental as it seems, I believe that helping you with your predicament was the kind of thing he’d have done in my place. He didn’t ask for repayment of any kind, but that was my way of...paying it forward, so to speak.”

Barry was struck speechless. Len...Len had unknowingly helped him in some form of gratitude for what Barry had done. It was like some strange, cosmic circle of positive karma, and Barry was humbled to realize it. Of course he’d known his actions could have some kind of a flow-on effect upon Len’s life, but he hadn’t really expected those actions to be the catalyst for Len embracing some of the good in himself.

Although he had no idea what to say, he suspected his face said enough. He was overwhelmed with warmth and he knew he was smiling; a soft, fond smile that he was aware of but had no real control over.

Len’s eyes, bright and twinkling, flicked between Barry’s eyes and his lips.

“Careful, Barry,” he said, voice a little rougher than usual. "You keep aiming that kind of smile at a man...you could give him the wrong impression."

At that, Barry’s blush came back in full force.

He could deny what Len was hinting at, could play it off and walk away, but although Len was standing in front of him, Barry hadn’t forgotten the feeling of loss and grief that had ripped through him when he found out Len had died. Life was short, and Barry was sick of wasting time.

So instead of brushing it off, or stammering out an excuse, Barry took a step closer, too close to be misinterpreted, and let his smile grow.

“What are you doing, Barry?” Len asked, so softly that Barry had to strain to hear him. The expression on his face was curious, but he wasn’t smirking anymore.

“I uh...I think I’m trying to get the courage together to ask you on a date,” Barry admitted, licking his lips.

“You think?”

“Yeah. I mean…” Barry swallowed. “It kind of depends on what your answer is going to be.”

Len was smirking again, Barry could tell, but he couldn’t drag his eyes away from Len’s. There was barely half a step between them, but Len moved in even closer until Barry could feel the body heat radiating off him.

“Was I not clear? I haven’t been spending my free time here because I enjoy being judged by your ridiculous band of cops, misfits, and uptight doctors.”

With that, Len wound his hand around Barry’s neck, pulling him into a slow, deep kiss.

Kissing Len was nothing like Barry had expected. Len was so cool, hard and calm in everything that he did, but his lips were warm and soft, his tongue was teasing, coaxing, and his teeth would nip at Barry’s lip in a way that was more playful than he’d ever imagined could come from Captain Cold.

“Oh,” Barry croaked, breath caught in his throat when Len eventually pulled away.

“What is it?” Len asked. He was still so close that Barry could feel the words against his lips.

“You’re...you’re so warm.”

There was a tiny, startled puff of laughter against Barry’s mouth. “And what, precisely, were you expecting? I may be Cold, but I’m still human, Barry.”

“Believe me,” Barry said a little sadly, the events of last several days still fresh in his mind, “I know.”

There was a crease between Len’s eyebrows, like he was trying to figure Barry out, trying to untangle the mess of feelings Barry was flooded with and probably broadcasting all over the place. Barry was happy, happier than he’d been in a long while, but he couldn’t quite forget what had happened before he could become so. Still, none of that mattered — not anymore — and so Barry shoved those thoughts to the back of his mind and focused on what he had in front of him.

Len was alive, working with him, and wanted him too. Barry wasn’t going to let that opportunity slip through his fingers by dwelling on a past that...that hadn’t even technically happened in this timeline.

Instead, Barry cupped Len’s jaw in both hands, and leaned back in. This time, he led the kiss, soft and innocent at first, until Len’s lips parted and Barry could deepen it.

And how had Barry gone all this time without knowing what it felt like to curl his tongue around Len’s and lose himself in the taste of Len’s mouth? He could spend forever just like that, in a warm, tender moment where it was easy to forget what had happened in the past and focus solely on the present. He didn’t want to pull away from the kiss, wanted to sink further into it and see how long they could stay that way, but then one of the computers beeped, reminding Barry that they were in the cortex where just anyone could walk in.

He broke the kiss, reluctantly.

“To be continued?” he whispered, mimicking Len’s earlier statement. His heart surged when Len gave him a half smile, the one that meant he was planning something, and a tiny nod.

Len pressed his forehead against Barry’s, and Barry relaxed into it, just enjoying the feel of Len’s body pressed against his and the arms wound around him.

“I should thank you, Barry,” Len said quietly.

Barry pulled back slightly, just enough to look at Len properly. “What for?”

A sad, but sincere smile spread across Len’s face. “For giving us the help we needed when no one else would. You changed my life. And Lisa’s. You proved to me...to us...that sometimes people do care. So thank you.”

For a moment Barry thought the floor had dropped out from beneath him, but Len was still there, still smiling despite how Barry was clinging to him desperately enough to probably hurt a little. “You...how did you know?”

Len shrugged. “I have an impeccable memory, and you have a particularly unforgettable face. My teenaged-self thought you were attractive, despite your glaring ineptitude for subtlety.”

Barry swallowed, his throat dry and his stomach doing flips. “How long…? How long have you known?”

“Two hours,” Len checked his watch, “and seventeen minutes, if you’re asking how long I’ve known you made the trip. But I've been waiting for you to do so for longer...ever since I stood in front of a wormhole that led to the night your mother was killed. That was the moment I realized that you could travel through time.”

“You were never supposed to see me back then.”

“Well,” Len snorted, “we clearly need to work on your stalking skills.”

“I wasn’t...that’s not...” Barry groaned. “I wasn’t stalking—”

“Chill, Barry. I know what you were doing. Playing the hero, as per usual.”

Hearing it said like that felt wrong to Barry, because no matter how much he wanted to help people, he wouldn’t do the things he’d done for just anyone.

“It was more than that,” he argued.

Len nodded. “Of course it was.” It didn’t sound condescending, but his mouth twitched in amusement and he let out a little chuckle. “I must admit; I was startled the first time I saw you without your mask. I knew there had to be an explanation; that I’d met a relation of yours...or a doppelgänger. Or more likely...that he didn’t look like you at all, that I was remembering him incorrectly.” He paused. “Memories are interesting...and fragile. Easily affected by the subconscious. Every logical argument said he couldn’t have been you. I didn’t have any heroes as a child, Barry. But that mysterious man watching over me — the man with no talent for subterfuge but enough good in him to save two children he didn’t know from their abusive father — he became my hero. And there you were; a hero in the classic sense. It was easy to believe that my mind was playing tricks on me, fooling me into thinking you were the same person.”

“But...you only spoke to him...to me...for a minute. Why did you think he — I — was the one who helped you?”

“Really, Barry?” Len asked, a hint of mocking in his tone. “You’re terrible at deception. Terrible.” He sighed, looking for all the world like he was both disappointed and amused. “You were the only new variable in the equation. A beautiful man with a sad face and kind eyes was watching me carefully, then two days later my father was arrested on an anonymous tip and a packet of undeniable evidence. It wasn't particularly difficult to put two and two together. But after I met you, after I saw what you looked like without the mask — exactly as I remembered him — I convinced myself that I was imagining your face over his. A false memory.” Len paused, shaking his head at Barry. “And then…”

“And then you found out I can travel through time.”

“You can’t begin to imagine how drastically my world was turned upside down in that moment. Leaving aside the sheer revelation that time travel is possible...Barry, knowing that it might have been — was almost certainly — you that saved me and my sister, in spite of everything...” Len swallowed. “You changed our lives. You went well and truly beyond what anyone else could, or would — or probably should — do.”

“And then you decided not to betray us,” Barry concluded. Dr. Wells had once told Barry that any deviation to the timeline, no matter how small, could result in a cataclysm. That was true, Barry knew, but he’d also come to learn that sometimes the after-effects of a change could keep flowing positively.

“This may be hard to believe, but I hadn’t intended to betray you in the first place.” Len shrugged. “I thought about it, of course, but I felt inspired by you, even before I knew it was you. Of course, it was obvious that attempt to save your mother was your first big leap, so I knew you hadn’t made the change...not yet. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting it to happen for quite some time.”

“I only got back this morning,” Barry said. “I didn’t think anyone would even—how did you figure it out so quickly?”

“Barry, please. You were hardly acting like yourself this morning. For a moment I thought you would violently hug me. Besides…”

“Besides what?”

“You denied watching me, and it was...very nearly identical to my memory of that day. It wasn’t too difficult to put things together after that.”

“Is that...is that why you’re here? Why you’re working with us? Because of what I did?”

“In part,” Len admitted. “I’ll never forget what you did for us, Barry, and I dread to imagine how far my father may have escalated. But it’s more than that. Gratitude only gets you so far, after all.”

“What’s...what’s the other part, then?”

“This,” Len purred as he pressed in tighter, rocking his hips into Barry’s. “I want you. I have since that night in the woods, when you were willing to let me be me, so long as I didn’t work too far against your moral compass. You challenge me, but in the most enjoyable and intriguing ways.”

“But you never—”

“I never thought I had a chance before, never expected you to see me as more than Captain Cold. But once I figured out what you’d done...I knew you wouldn’t risk so very much — the fate of the world, if things went terribly — for someone you had no faith in. I knew that at some point, you began to believe in me...or would do so. I’m never going to be a saint, Barry, but I think I’d like to live up to whatever it is you see in me that no one else does.”

“It’s not…” Barry swallowed thickly, overcome by the things Len had said to him. “You make it sound like I was being selfless. But you don’t know...Len you don’t know what happened — to you, to Lisa. You don’t know what I was responsible for.”

“I know that you wouldn’t travel back for nothing. That something must have happened, something horrific. And you’re right, I don’t know what that was,” Len agreed. The hand on Barry’s lower back moved, sliding around and up his torso until it rested over Barry’s chest. “But I do know what kind of man you are, Barry. Whatever happened, whatever you blame yourself for, there must be more to it. And I have no doubt that it’s far less your fault than you’re willing to accept.”

“I…” Barry’s shoulders sagged in relief and he dropped his forehead to Len’s shoulder. Len’s hand snaked up from its place over Barry’s heart to grasp the back of his neck. It felt strangely like reassurance, and he looked back up at Len with a sad smile. “Thank you. I don’t know why it helps to hear that when you don’t even know what…just...thank you.”

“Anytime.” Len paused, studying Barry’s face for several moments. “Will you tell me happened? What made you go back?”

“It’s better that you don’t know.”

“Better for whom?”

“For you.”

“You don’t need to shoulder every burden alone, Barry. It hardly seems fair that you martyr yourself over something that none of us remember, that you wallow in your guilt and misery without anyone to help make it more bearable.”

“There’s not really any getting around that.” But Barry wasn’t alone, not really. Cisco knew. Barry wanted to reassure Len, but he refused to give him an avenue to figure out what had happened. Len didn’t need to know the truth of how much worse things could have gotten for him. “I don’t want you to know. I don’t...the things that happened were terrible and I don’t want you to have to suffer through them, even second-hand.”

“I’m a curious man, Barry. It’s in my nature.”

“I know. But please. Just trust me when I tell you...you’re better off not knowing.”

Barry didn’t expect it to be that easy. Len wasn’t the type to just ignore the details and trust others, so he was surprised when Len replied with just one word.

“Okay.”

There was no smirk, no deception. Just a sincere agreement and a gentle squeeze where Len’s hand still rested on the back of Barry’s neck.

“Really? Just like that?”

“I trust you, Barry.”

Of the things that Len had said and done since Barry returned to the present, that was the biggest gesture, the most meaningful. Trust was something Barry knew Len didn’t give easily, but he trusted Barry; he believed Barry deserved it, no matter what had happened between them in the past.

It was such a small, simple thing, but it was sincere and it meant the world to Barry. He couldn’t help feeling like their past didn’t matter anymore...not when he had so much hope for their future.

“I trust you, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  _Bring home the boys and scrap scrap metal the tanks_   
>  _Get hitched and make a career out of robbing banks_   
>  _Because the world is just a teller and we are wearing black masks_   
>  _"You broke our spirit," says the note we pass_
> 
> _So we can take the world back from the heart-attacked_  
>  _One maniac at a time we will take it back_  
>  _You know time crawls on you're waiting for the song to start_  
>  _So dance alone when to the beat of your heart_  
> 
> _Hey young blood_   
>  _Doesn't it feel like our time is running out?_   
>  _I'm gonna change you like a remix_   
>  _Then I'll raise you like a phoenix_   
>  _Wearing our vintage misery_   
>  _No, I think it looked a little better on me_   
>  _I'm gonna change you like a remix_   
>  _Then I'll raise you like a phoenix_
> 
> _Put on your war paint_
> 
> _The war is won_   
>  _Before it's begun_   
>  _Release the doves_   
>  _Surrender love_   
> 
> 
> The above lyrics are a segment of the song that this fic takes its name from...and the song that I realized ties in exceptionally well after I already started writing: [The Phoenix by Fall Out Boy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hDZbroaQDc). It felt...fitting.
> 
> Anyway, one thing I want to address is that of course, not everything that changed from Barry’s trip is for the better. Yes, Len is alive, Lisa is well, and Eddie is back, too. My headcanon even says that Joe made Detective earlier in the new timeline.
> 
> But there are negatives, too. Of course we’ve seen that Eddie’s self esteem issues are still there. It’s a minor downside and one that I’m sure everyone can resolve by just being there for Eddie when he needs it. But there are bigger negatives, too.
> 
> The first is that Dr. Wells is still alive, locked in the pipeline and therefore still a major threat. That danger is a downside that Barry will eventually recognize, but that in the meantime he actually thinks is a good thing. This ties directly into the second big problem -- one that Barry will never know about, because this fic was set a few months after the end of season one, but several months before season two began, which means Barry knows nothing about Dr. Wells' will.
> 
> Henry Allen is still in prison. Barry will never know that his decision to change Len’s past robs his father of his freedom, at least in the way it was granted in canon. Barry thinks that Dr. Wells being alive means his father still has a chance at being proven innocent, without realizing instead that it’s the reason his father remains in custody.


End file.
